Pity Party for One, Anyone?

I've kept a journal since I was probably...10? For the last 17 years, I've chronicled every awkward phase (or, I should say, every phase of a perpetually awkward life), every heartbreak and new love, nearly every vacation, most of my harebrained book ideas/poem drafts/sketches of random strangers on NYC subways. My diary has been with me on the bank of the Seine, the beaches of Hawaii, and in the hospital room where my daughter was born. My diary contains the eulogy I wrote and read at my father's funeral.

I think it's a peculiar thing that people should even have the impulse to journal. Some might think it is an inherently narcissistic motivation--this desire to archive the minutiae of one's existence. Who, after all, stands to benefit from your illegible musings besides you? But narcissism or not, I was incredibly grateful for my journals the other night when I was in the midst of a pity party for one.

I've been in a weird place professionally and creatively. An odd purgatory where I've had enough success or achievement to lodge a foot in the door, but not enough to actually be invited in. Last week I was battling a hefty double punch of self-pity: I'd received two rejection emails from literary magazines I was hoping to publish in, and I was dealing with an unmitigated sense of loser-ness in the prospect of my future career as an academic librarian.

And as I retreated to my journal to commemorate it, I noticed that I only had one page left to write. Not only that, I was finishing my journal EXACTLY a year to the date that I'd started it. I figured it was a sign. Divine intervention. So I gave the first entry a reread.

What I wrote about myself was this, "For what purpose am I here? Failed poet and sappy diarist. Overblown ego and burning heart."



That one line in particular, "failed poet," prompted me to read my diary from start to finish. I wanted to know if that statement still felt true a year later.

What I realized after reading my diary was this: I had grown tremendously as a woman, as a writer in the past year. When I wrote those things I was coming from a place of brokenness having made the difficult decision to leave my teaching career behind, and feeling insecure in my capabilities as a writer. But in the year since I penned those statements I wrote two manuscripts worth of poems, won a poetry prize, secured publications in three fantastic literary journals, nearly completed a Master's degree, and conquered some personal issues that had been previously crippling.

That's when it hit me--this understanding of the transformative power of journaling--the unique treasure of being able to rediscover yourself and grow from the retrospective examination of who you were, are, or wanted to be at any given point in your own personal history. As my pastor likes to say, "That's good stuff." Good stuff indeed.

I felt reborn after rereading the ups and downs of the previous year. I was ready to become my own cheerleader. I was ready to steam forward into my next journal, and whatever next phase lay ahead of me with some genuine joy in my heart. For my last entry, instead of lamenting my rejection slips and lack of professional security--I wrote a list of specific ways I had grown over the last year, and another list of traits I'd like to develop in myself going forward.

Page one might read "failed poet," but the final page has yet to be written.

Oh Writer's Block, Thou Art a Black Dog from Hell

What are you supposed to do when the inspiration just sort of...stops?

From March to December 2010, I wrote about 250 poems. That's an average of 27.77777778 poems per month--just shy of a poem a day. We had a good run, me and poetry. This creative burst came after years of neglecting poetry in the wake of endless academic papers, lesson plans, reports, and email. I never made that choice consciously, to stop writing poetry--but being a good little student and careerist, poetry seemed like a selfish indulgence.

But then I attended a writers conference, my first, and I arrived ready to go to battle: with two fully-groomed non-fiction book proposals, business cards, a binder of writing samples, and my best I'm-a-serious-but-hip-writer-glasses a la Jonathan Franzen. I had a couple of promising bites for my book proposals, but it was the poetry that stood out the most for the editors I met, particularly one who was kind enough to actually sit and talk shop for an entire hour. My poetry? But those were the writing samples I had shoved in the binder at the last minute to show "range." I was nominated for the conference poetry award, and while I didn't win, it was an awakening of sorts. It reminded me of who my first love was, and had always been. That was the beginning of our love affair.

Luckily poetry had not divorced me in favor of someone who took her more seriously over the years.

And now, nearly a year after that fateful conference, I find myself writing blog entries during my hallowed poetry time. Every time I've tried to put any poems down the last 7 weeks or so, I've hated them. Hated them. They've felt forced/trite/too-overworked/too aware of themselves/too you're a sad woman with an English degree stop kidding yourself.

So I'm left with the question, what do you do when you hit this wall? Some thoughts:

1) Talk to other writers--I've met some A-mazing writers in the last year. Both in the academic circuit and online. People that I feel privileged to have met, and I know to a great extent that this will benefit me in the long run. Not so much because of the obvious networking piece, but more because I believe when great minds interact a piece of them is taken away in the other. It's a kind of magic osmosis, a blending and rejecting of ideas, aesthetics, and principles that might have never occurred to you, sitting alone in front of your laptop.

2) Go do something other than writing for a bit: This is not to say that you shouldn't continue to labor on your writing in some way daily, but I think it's good to add something new to the mix. Any good trainer will tell you that you will hit a weight-loss plateau after awhile. Usually this is cured by adding new elements to the workout regiment. What will this look like for me? Well, let's just say I have my first session with Sheneka Rosser trainer extraordinaire this coming Saturday. Have you ever seen a morbidly obese half-Asian female poet? Well have you?! No. Not gonna happen here. Facebook/Google images has officially killed the whole illusion that you can be a writer who cares nothing for your appearance. You don't have to be a sex symbol, but you can't look like the uni-bomber either. I know how shallow that sounds, but it seems naive or deceptive to tell a writer otherwise.

3) Get cozy with the business end of writing: Writing is like a mullet, dude. You can't have the party in the back without the business in the front. It isn't a mullet if you take one or the other away. When the muse departs, it's a perfect time to get to business--start studying literary mags you admire, reading articles by their editors, following AND commenting on industry blogs, becoming a part of the dialog in some way.

4) Stay positive: This is SO easy to tell someone else. I've told my writerly friends, "Hey, you're in a gathering season right now, that's all." Now it's time to put my money where my new-age mouth is. And I will remind myself that you can't write like you're on fire all the time or we'd all be dead by 25. And I will remind myself that I should like to sustain the fire over a lifetime. And I will I espouse the model of Sharon Olds over Sylvia Plath where life-writing-sanity-balance is concerned.

And that is precisely what I will do until inspiration rockets down into my brain like brimstone. In the interim, pass the 10lb weights--I'm busy getting ready for my new purple tankini.

*What do you do when you hit writer's block--I mean, your "gathering season"?