19 October 2021

Day 19 of Writing Nangak Tamboree.

I’m back on my writing rock today. Well, it might be the same boulder as I sat on to scribble the other day. Or a totally different rock. So observant.

This morning I was reading this excellent essay on Slow Writing by Melissa Matthewson. It begins:

I’ll invite you to read this slowly. To remember that a voice is embodied in this text, that in this process of following the sentence towards its meaning, in a kind of walking, as in a procession or parade, the writer’s creative process will emerge, a deliberate motion with care as the foundation for which the writer is then able to articulate beauty and suggest some new knowledge, but of course, this will take time.

‘A Revolution in Creativity: On Slow Writing’, Melissa Matthewson, LitHub, 12 October, 2021.

She’s so right. I am all in favour of slow food and slow travel. But when it comes to writing, speedy is my default setting. Even here. Sometimes I dash to Nangak Tamboree, stand and look and listen, scribble a few notes, take a few shots, then dash away again. What I try to do, and want to do, is walk the long way here, then keep walking, and write in a few spots as I go over an hour or two.

It depends on the day, the time of day, and what else is happening. Ideally, I’d spend long slow hours here, but ideally I wouldn’t have books to finish, emails to send, meetings to attend, assignments to mark, meals to cook, and seemingly endless To Do lists. So I visit before or after work, and can stay for longer when it’s not a work day. Then post each evening.

But anyway, I write fast. Even writing a novel, I draft fast. It’s not a race, but sometimes it feels like it. There are so many stories to tell and so little time. I am not one of those people who thinks writing is painful. I enjoy it and I like drafting fast. If I have a writing week or, even better, a month, especially at a writer’s residency, I aim for 2000 words a day and often go well over. But then, I don’t have to think about anything else – just writing, sleeping and eating. Maybe a walk once a day. I wish life was always like that, and I know it is for some people. But not for me.

I have two academic papers to finish in the next two weeks and a big conference this weekend, on top of everything else, and that seems ridiculous (and it is) but it’ll be fine. Somehow. Then I’ll tell myself never to put myself in that position again.

Until the next time.

So even though some days I curse the person whose idea it was to come here every day and write (me), it’s writing that’s just for me. If anybody reads it, that’s a bonus. I’ve had some gorgeous emails and comments over the last few days about these posts and I’m genuinely surprised that you can make head or tail of these scribbles.

But I do admire the idea of slow writing. I link the idea in my mind with the essay by Michael LaPointe I mentioned the other day, on writers walking, and making sure that the walking doesn’t just become a chore – or a race. Or subsumed into some other frenetic activity.

Like the bloody Bird Count. It started yesterday. Today I’m out on a hillock near Sports Field Lake, and the Bird Count app timer is going (you have to do it for 20 minutes) and I’m looking this way and that and madly pushing buttons to record them all (24 wood ducks!) and end up swearing. I decided to do it since I was here staring at birds anyway, and I’ve never been part of a citizen science event, but measuring the blighters is a whole other thing. Thank God it only goes for a few days. Because that does feel like a race, let me tell you. Writing about them is much more fun.