I've probably posted the "I'm done with writing" thing a half dozen times in the last few years, and so far, it's never stuck. This isn't that post, because I don't think it's going to stick now, either. This is just to let folks know why I'm not posting much nor will be posting much.
About six years ago, when I wrote the first of a few "I quit" posts, I referred to a monumental decision I thought I'd made in my twenties, one I later repented of. I vowed then that I'd care more about making great art than about having a family, because anyone can have a family but only a rare few can make great art. Or something like that. I don't really know what I said, because the text in question no longer exists, which is probably for the good. I wrote a lot of strange things in the years after I got out of the Marine Corps. The Marines scrambled my brain a bit, and it took me a few years to get it scrambled back.
Anyhow, what I'd decided by my thirties was that the "art first, family second" philosophy was morally bankrupt. I'm not totally sure what changed my mind. Maybe it was several things. For one, yes, the people who produce art are rarer than the people who produce human beings, but there's still plenty of art to go around. There's not a shortage of supply relative to demand. Or maybe it's just that I didn't want to be like William Faulkner, drinking on my daughter's birthday when she'd asked me not to because, "Nobody remembers Shakespeare's daughter." Or maybe I just thought that I have a limited time on Earth, and being good to the people around me is a more guaranteed way to use that time well than writing a novel is. Whatever the reason, while I have occasionally had to fudge family responsibilities in order to write, I've never forgotten that family is more important. If I write a novel people are still talking about in a thousand years but fail as a father, then I've wasted my time.
Given that those are the rules I've set up for myself, it's been really hard to find time to write. Not just write, really. Anyone can probably carve out a few hours a week to slap down some kind of prose. Finding time to write seriously is what's hard, meaning to not just write but read good writing, think about good writing, write about good writing, make drafts of my own writing that I strive to make as good as the best of what I'm reading. Maybe even participate in the literary community a bit and also pay attention to some advice on the best way to find places to publish what I've written. It's a lot. Professors are always grousing about not having time to write, which I understand, but it's family, not work, that is the real strain on a writer.
I've avoided putting this out there for the public to see, but now that COVID-19 has all children in America home-schooling, I don't worry so much about it now. We pulled our son from school at the end of the 2018-2019 school year, and we've been home schooling him since. He was massively under-performing relative to what standardized tests said he should be able to do. A lot of it had to do with him being bored, and therefore not paying attention to what he was supposed to do, then when I emailed teachers to find out what he was supposed to be doing, not getting answers so I didn't know how to make sure he stayed on task. I figured however hard it would be to do it myself, at least I'd know what he his work was.
So for a year and half, when I get home from work, I spend a few hours working with him. He still doesn't do the greatest work for me, but occasionally, he does something that lets me know the lights are still on up there for him. I'm relatively certain he'll be able to pass a GED in a few months when he turns sixteen, and then he can be free to find his own path a little bit. At least, that's the dream.
Until then, I'm still really straining to keep up. We can't work a full 5-6 hour day every day, so I have to settle for 2-3 hours days that we also do on weekends and holidays (and the summer). We just do a little bit every day, and in that manner, we've kept up with more or less a high school workload.
Add to my family responsibilities that I have begun to feel lately that I haven't focused enough on my skill as a translator, meaning I've been reading Korean texts instead of fiction in English, and you can see why I don't feel like I'm really working as hard as I need to with writing to get anywhere. Yes, reading Korean literature is probably helpful to me as a writer, because it makes me think outside my own linguistic box, but it takes me a long time to get through Korean literature. My reading time is more than double in Korean what it is in English, and I'm not a fast reader in English.
Which is why this is just to say I'm not really quitting, but since half-assing it isn't any better than quitting, I don't know what I'm doing with writing, either. I've had to stop my analyses of Pushcart stories. When Best American Short Stories come out in a few months, I don't know if I'll do those, either.
That's a shame, because I really like doing it. I think it's an important contribution to the literary world, because there's a paucity of online resources for people to go to for help when they feel a little lost by the stories they read in the top anthologies. More than that, I know it's been good for my own fiction writing to focus so deeply on some of the best writing that's out there. Even when I don't like a story, that helps me refine my own ideas of what it is I do like and what I want to do as a writer.
That's all just a long way of explaining why I haven't been around much and might not be for a while. Maybe it'll get better when the boy passes his GED. Or maybe I'm so into Korean things now, I never get back into writing. I don't know. I'll at least help the world to a gratuitous political rant now and again in the next few months, no doubt.
It's been great how many people have tuned in for stuff I've written about short stories, especially BASS. Even if those folks just help themselves to an explanation or two and then run off without saying high, it's always great to me to see that a hundred or so folks stop by every day, mostly for short story explanations. Something I wrote became a part of the day of people I don't know. That makes me happy, and probably will never stop making me happy.
Well, you know I'll miss you if you decide not to do BASS 2020 - you've been very motivating these past few years. I have a couple of other people who indicated a few months ago they might jump in, but who knows. I'm not even 100% sure I'll be around in November, at the rate things are going. Every time I say "It's been a crappy day" the next day is even crappier.
ReplyDeleteCool that you're really into Korean stuff, that you're into anything for that matter (I'm really struggling to find a reason to breathe, myself). I was watching the Korean wedding episode of Gilmore Girls the other night, and remembered I was going to have you check it out for accuracy (for some reason, the closed captions are in some form of Romanized Korean - which makes no sense, since if you understand Korean you don't need captions and if you don't, the captions won't help) and I remembered, "Hey, yeah, that was something else I was going to do and never did."
While my blog stats are still running behind last year's, I am seeing the traditional September Boom, and like you, it's somehow gratifying. I guess someone's still reading, whether they're in classrooms or on Zoom.