Last month, I attended Rural Philanthropy Days, a conference hosted by Community Resource Center (CRC). CRC works to connect grant makers (organizations and people with money) to grant seekers (mostly organizations who need money). I was presenting at this conference, a workshop I submitted called “Mapping Your Story,” and I was also on a panel on arts in the Valley, representing the Narrow Gauge Book Cooperative, and myself as a writer.
Conferences like this are meant to be a place for people to network and identify shared goals. It was a little bit of a strange experience, since I am not in the nonprofit sector. My experience working for state education and writing grants for a nonprofit museum gave me a bit of an insight, but I wasn’t doing the work that most people there were doing.
I did network, and connect, mostly with people who wanted to know what I, or my place of work, could do for them. I went in wondering what I could do for others, too, and then realized that what I could do for others, in this context, would simply take me away from what I want to be doing right now: Making art and building community.
In the town hall, people said what we needed was help accessing the resources available, because most orgs didn’t have the knowhow to write grants, or the time to track them down. On the arts panel, I joked that, if anyone wanted to drop me $10k or more, I’d happily take it so that I could work less and work on my book more.
The common theme was a lack of time to do what needs to be done. Everything that people wanted from me at this conference would take more of my time.
I was invited to apply for a full-time job writing grants after attending RPD. I had a visceral reaction to the suggestion, an actual, bodily recoil. The job sounded like a good one: decent pay, good benefits, etc. But really, I do not want a full-time job. I knew if I applied for and got that job, that it would be the death of my book.
It’s still a struggle to work on my book. Part of the struggle is just time. I work less than I did when I was a college professor, and yet somehow I don’t feel like there is ever enough time. I wrote a bit about this in my post, Community and Energy, about having to pull back in order to make time for my book.
I’ve succeeded in that somewhat, but still find myself lacking the energy and focus to write the way I want to.
I want to be able to write for 8 hours at a time and produce pages and pages of prose. I want that flow state, where I’m not even sure if I’m the one who produced the work that’s there when I’m done.
The reality is a couple hours here and there, followed by days of restless energy, thinking about the book while I’m at work or doing dishes or trying to clean my house, and then when I do have time, getting nothing down on paper or sleeping through alarms or just dissociating for an hour or more and not knowing where the time went.
Much of this is actually normal when it comes to the trauma writing process. My nervous system gets activated, my body and mind are trying to protect me, etc. The distractions, the oversleeping, the zoning out, all of it prevents me from getting into the core of those memories. It protects me, also, from the consequences of actually writing the book, of having to move beyond this step. If I never finish the book, no one will read it or react to it. If I never finish the book, I won’t find out if I can get it published or not. If I never finish the book, it will be one more thing to be disappointed about, and disappointment is a much more comfortable and familiar emotion than pride or joy.
One of the things I need is time, that’s certain. But I also need to just muscle through and write the damn book. Few people would call me a cowardly person, considering how outspoken I am (often unadvisedly so), yet approaching this, I feel a bit cowardly. I’m avoiding the thing I most want to do, and for what?
That’s a question to unpack in therapy, probably, but the short answer is to protect myself. The life I have is a life I know. Finishing the book takes me into a life unknown, and that’s kinda scary.
Part of my goal in writing this post today was to get my brain thinking about the book, even if I’m not actively writing the book. Many of the things that go into writing are actually “not writing.” My self-care, like taking walks, meditating, journaling, resolving conflicts and clarifying relationships… all of this is “not writing” but it also clears space for the writing.
Everything I do, each day, feeds or starves the book. Some days, she seems sated and doesn’t ask for anything from me. Some days, she’s ravenous and gnashes her sharp teeth. This week, she’s been mostly quiet, and I’m not sure if that means she’s satisfied, or if she’s waiting to pounce.
Hmm… I think she’s waking up. The only way to know, for sure, is to get out my pen and paper and see what comes.
Ink and Vein 