Birthday celebrations are finally over (well, nearly) and my mami is back in our tropical patria so I've spent the past two days ensconced down here, in my little basement office, typing away and producing what I hope will be about 45 pages of new, field-expanding work.
What I'm working on now will be added to another 40 or so pages already in existence to finalize the first chronological chapter of my Monster but the second chapter I'll have finished so far this year.
The more I work on this, the more I wish I was faster, smarter, clearer, sharper in my thinking and my writing. The words fail me or repeat themselves annoyingly or play tricks on me and say what I don't mean and mean what I don't say.
But I know that the important thing is to force those little black letters to make their indelible marks on the paper. Once that is achieved on my part, the process of revision and consultation with my committee will take its course. The excellence, if it's there (and I sure am flexing my brain muscles hard to that end), will shine through eventually.
Right now, the words, the thoughts, the creativity needs to get on the page or else all the thinking and pondering and reading is pretty much worthless. I've come to realize that it doesn't matter how excited I am about my project, if it doesn't make it onto the page, if I don't force myself to give up "Heroes" and "Journeyman" and even "Ugly Betty," so that I can sit my ass on this chair for hours on end, it's as if what I have to say didn't actually exist.
And I want it to exist, I will it to exist. I want my Monster to see the light, to come alive, to breathe and to scream a los cuatro vientos that I have created Her. I want my Monster to -- as I hope it will -- rock my field and serve to place my name among those who are thought to have something interesting and new to say.
I remember once being surprised when someone described me as "driven." At this moment, I really appreciate that I learned early on in my life to be driven and, later in life, how to be driven in a good way. Unlike my driven youth, when I was trying to achieve impossible perfection, I don't obsess and give up all pleasure or make the Monster my Calvary. Now, being driven means knowing when to work and when to play, although most of my play time now is for shorter periods of time and the greatest of play times is being postponed until next year.
After my defense in June 2008, I'm going to learn quilting, and photography, and I'm going to get myself to a spa in the desert and get a hot stone massage. How different my life is going to be, I told my husband last night, when my dissertation isn't always pending, and hanging over me, and when I'm not always working on it to get it finished.
That's when my husband said he admired me (very high praise from him, indeed) because I work so hard every day. "That's a good thing about both of us," he said. "We're both intellectually honest. We mean what we say and we act on the things we say."
Neither of us understands people who say they believe in something or describe themselves as a certain kind of person but then their actions point to the complete opposite of what they say.
At any rate, I like to see myself in those terms, as intellectually honest. And, honestly, as much as I have a passion for teaching, I also have profound love for sitting here and putting my thoughts on paper and for getting my intellectual gears churning. It's not that I don't find ways to procrastinate -- heck, I even scrubbed the tub yesterday (which I absolutely hate doing) rather than come back downstairs -- but I won't allow distraction to prevail.
I definitely look forward to the day (sooner rather than later, I hope!) when I don't have my Monster hanging over me. But something tells me that I might just miss the darned thing. After all, it sure has a way of making an honest woman out of me these days.
1 comment:
Dicen que si un árbol se cae en la selva y nadie lo ve no se ha caido. Eso ocurre con todo lo que hacemos los seres humanos. Si cantamos no sabemos cuán bien lo hacemos hasta que "otro" nos escucha y nos da su aprobación. Lo mismo con el arte, con la literatura, con la historia. Sabido es que todos los grandes artistas, no importa cuántos años lleven actuando, admiten tener pánico antes de salir a escena.
Con los escritores y con los que hemos pasado por el proceso de una tesis sucede igual. Uno no puede estar seguro de nada de lo que pare hasta que otro que sabe lo lee y nos dice. Entretanto la ansiedad por saber es grande y luego la satisfacción si nos aprueban es mayor.
En el camino hay muchas tentaciones para procrastinar, de muchas formas, pero debes seguir sentándote en forma disciplinada cada día hasta que termines el monstruo.
Te advierto que al terminar lo vas a echar de menos porque se siente un gran vacío. Pero siempre puedes venirte a despejar frente al mar de tu isla.
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