I've always been a slow writer and tend to call my slowness the cost of careful writing. But, as often as slowness is a choice, it isn't. Towards the end of my sophomore year in college, I got too sick to finish three of my four classes and spent the summer working on the resulting Incompletes. And, though I did nothing but work that summer, I worked at such a slow and painful rate, I still had two Incompletes left in September.
My thoughts keep returning to that summer, trying to name what went wrong. I went home to recover and work, mostly in my bedroom's attached office, where, in high school, I spent the hours after school learning to write fiction. (Having a space just for writing made me feel, even at 13 or 14, like a real writer; as long as I was in it, my thoughts and phrasings mattered.)
At the start of summer, sitting in my office, I felt optimistic. I wrote myself a list of deadlines, and tried to divide my time between my Incompletes and fiction writing. But my optimism began to wane in the first month; I had trouble concentrating; most days, I could barely read fifty pages. The second and third months, I began writing papers, and it's those months, really, that I think back on most often, believing my increasingly pained relationship to writing, if properly described, might also be an accurate description of the relationship between thought and language.
During those two months, I forgot how to write. It felt, at once, like stupidity and brilliance; I couldn't write, but I couldn't write because I'd become too sensitive to language -- to the ability of each word and comma to alter meaning. Most of the summer, I was working on papers for a class on critical theory; the papers were short, but only to encourage a style so dense that, removed from comprehensible meaning as its sentences might seem to someone not familiar with the discipline's vocabulary, it required a great carefullness -- so great as to make writing, for me, temporarily impossible.
If my writing process was previously like playing dominos, making sure each new sentence continued the logic of the previous sentence and also added something new, my writing process that summer recalled "sqaures," a game in which sqaures with different half-shapes on each side are matched up to compose a larger sqaure. And that larger sqaure, for me, wasn't the essay, but each sentence -- with an assembly time of one to four hours.
In September, I went back to school, in good health but with no confidence. Reading and writing had become too difficult, and, over the Fall semester, I dropped three classes, including a remaining Incomplete. I'd learned my ability to write, contrary to past experiences, was not a given --and that, when it's lost, it seems like a miracle to have ever had it. How do we assume the right to language, and language's assertions? What guarantees that a thought will ever be simple or tidy enough for a sentence, progressing left to right and not spiraling outward with amendments?
More recent cycles of "writer's block" have added other questions: How does grammar become instinct? How do we learn and recall words? Where does a thought start and stop, or does it not do either?
Over the past year, words, and not sentences or paragraphs, have become the real challenge. I stopped being able to recall simple words and phrases-- "window drapes," "insinuations," "clasps," "barters" -- and more specific words that I used to call my favorites -- "teleology," "heuristics," "sublimation." When I complained to my boyfriend that I was losing my vocabulary, he asked if I wasn't idealizing and distorting a past self and its abilities.
But, about a month ago, I was diagnosed with ADD and started taking Adderall. My vocabulary returned. Language, like a manic wife, was sweet again (Not needing to rely on a theasarus anymore was like getting sex after a long and joyless regimen of porn and masturbation.).
"She" abandons me, loves me, locks me out, lets me in, soothes me, keeps me up too late too often, ignores me after fights -- and the more I need her, the more aware I am of her fickleness and faults. Why become a writer when it means marrying her? From a spouse, I want consistency, fidelity, and compassion. I can't will that from language. But, it's not just that I love her; it's that I don't know if I can love myself without her.
Posted by nchicha at April 23, 2004 09:05 AMNathalie,
Congratulations on your elegant new blog. I'm an MFA grad with depression and ADD, too. I tried adderall but had stomaches and headaches and gave up quickly. I have that same word problem you described, though...can I ask how long it took you to notice the effects of adderall? If you've had any side effects?
Thanks,
Evie
Evie- it's perfectly possible that Adderall was just wrong for you.
But you really have to be prepared to tinker A LOT w. meds if you want good results.
Headaches would probably mean you had to high a dose.
Posted by: Also ADD on May 12, 2004 11:25 AMNo, no side effects w/ the Adderall (10 mg in the morning). It took about 2 weeks for me to notice an improvement in my memory, but I noticed an improvement in my over-all motivation (towards writing and reading) instantly.
Posted by: N. Chicha on May 12, 2004 08:48 PMMotivated by adderall? That's because it's pharmaceutical amphetamine. Motivates the shit out of me, too, and I have not been diagnosed with ADD. Is adderall speed? Yes. It's speed.
Posted by: adderall on May 14, 2004 11:21 AMLanguage, it seems to me, is simply and only the construction of sentences. I don't think any particular occupation with language makes sense other than the study of the well constructed sentence. To learn the logical structure and to be able to express it seems to result in a more complex and accurate representation of what I feel and experience than to target the content of my language directly. Life is the stumbling block of my language, if my language is not rotten and spoiled by misunderstandings and obscurities, life will express itself through it perfectly.
Posted by: zerofoks on May 29, 2004 02:14 AMI read this entry a while back and I keep coming back to it. You've named something really important here. Writing matters more to me than anything else -- it's the one thing that defines me, beyond motherhood, beyond being someone's actual wife, even though I've chosen those roles and am happy within them, to the extent that I can be happy with anything that isn't nonstop immersion in language, itself. But that doesn't mean I'm always a productive writer. Perhaps, in fact, I'm anything but. I have a blog that goes on for miles, but no finished books. (Okay, I have one finished book. But I keep "forgetting" to send it out.) I have a fair amount of published poetry, but very little published prose. I follow tangents everywhere. The tangents matter. But there is this problem with not being able to focus, not being able to follow through on anything big. And I do forget words. Very basic words like "desk" or "chair." I laugh about this sometimes, claiming premature senility: "The nouns are the first to go." (Note: I'm 33.) So... anyway. I finally forced myself to talk to my doctor, about what a disaster I am in general (not just with regard to my craft, but with things like keys, which I lose at least 3-4 times a week), and the awful consequences that have resulted. He agreed I was a likely candidate for adult ADD diagnosis, and prescribed something called Strattera. Which, after three weeks, isn't doing a damned thing (besides costing me money). Its selling points include that it's a nonstimulant. The thing to try first, I guess, given the potential for meds like Adderall to be abused. Then I re-read this post, and the comment from one reader: "Motivated by adderall? That's because it's pharmaceutical amphetamine. Motivates the shit out of me, too, and I have not been diagnosed with ADD. Is adderall speed? Yes. It's speed." And I feel ridiculous, then, for even thinking of asking my doctor if perhaps I shouldn't try it.
I just want my brain to work. Is that asking so much? I'd like to hope it isn't.
Posted by: Victoria Marinelli on August 11, 2004 12:11 AMCaring about phrasing is well and good. Patience in thought is a virtue, and care in phrasing is suggestive of a writer who takes the time to be sure she says just what she wants. Better yet to be so patient as to take the time to think about how to write well. Nowadays, it seems to me, people mostly don't have the expertise in the writing craft that they did in the 1800's, and I suppose that's largely because present-day people mostly are enthusiastic and impatient in comparison. Truth is beautiful, and truth has a way of appearing where it is not expected. To seek it impatiently where one immediately wants it most just probably won't work. The evidence we need is all about us, and if we don't limit ourselves to seeking it just where we resolved to, we shall understand more in the long run. And so far as employment is concerned, loving grandchildren is more unselfish than loving children (the former being less related), and so patiently taking time to be rich in wisdom or wealth is just the thing to do more than people say. True, having children early is ideal (especially for females), but perhaps ideally it should be the munificence of parents and grandparents who enable love to ripen earlier than should be the case for fruits of thought.
Hmm. Your artistic goal is one that suggests a carefulness in general thoughts and expression, and yet you seem to be obsessed with that. A profitable distinction can be made between being careful because you are slow--because you "take time to smell the roses"--and because you are obsessed with cleanliness and avoidance of error. Professors, in particular, are ones to not be above making their pupils feel shamed and disgraced at lack of performance. There is something of a competition among professors--each to get his students to care more about his class--and if it means making a student feel like displayed absence of scholarly perfection is the result of a willful failure on her part of the defenses of her hindquarters, he might just do that to get her motivated. And this idolization of self-discipline, it may not be just a scheme, it may be something the professor himself possesses. And enthusiasm is the same way. Praising enthusiasm is a way to make pupils and employees work harder now when it is most useful to the leader that they do so. Never mind if enthusiasm can't be maintained. After they wear out, the semester will be over or they can be fired (for laziness, of course). But I suspect the idolization of enthusiasm is more of a problem among leaders of industry than among leaders of academia. As I said, it is hard to mix haste and thought. Hard to get students enthusiastic about calculus, for instance. (Not that intelligent people don't tend to be naturally enthusiastic, but it doesn't follow that so far as their studies and employments are concerned, they wouldn't be better off more cool.)
So I guess my advice would be to feel at ease with caring about phrasing. But the care should come from a kind of lazy patience that makes you care about the prettiness of language, and not from enthusiastic determination for lack of error. Your having made lists of deadlines, etc, suggests to me you viewed work as a battle of war. If not perfect, you will be screwed, you perhaps on some level felt and feel. Memory and flow are what writing needs, and those are what shell-shocked people lose. I recollect the Latin teacher I had in high school, who in most ways was my best most careful teacher, but she was so enthusiastic and drill-sergeant-like it made it hard for me to remember things, and foreign languages is unfortunately mostly memory. And then I think about a traumatic phone conversation I had once--every phrase I actually remember even in all its intonations because I very much felt I wanted to--but the order of what was said when the recollections bounce about in my brain, well, it is totally disjointed and random; trauma is bad for flow like nervousness to a stutterer. If you want to write well, memory and flow being so important to authors, you need to be patiently lazy and relaxed in your deliberateness. A more Buddhist attitude might serve you well. The vanity of life can only end with the ending of all desire (the third of Buddha’s Four Truths). Being less goal-oriented and living life more in the instant, though it would be the death of addicts and screwed-up people, is just the thing when dealing with ordinary, non-addictive matters. What does Yoda say? "Don't try, do."
To me what makes a good writer, so far as craft is concerned, is mostly her having a mental image of all the fairly common phrases and words and how they relate to each other, so that when she wants to say something, before long most of her options come to her. Also, she needs to have a similar understanding of her grammatical options. A hobby of mine is to make diagrams of words and phrases, drawing lines between words or groups of words where they are obvious connections of meaning. Ideally, I would like to be able to recite the most common words from memory, one after another, but of course rather than just memorizing a list, it is better to memorize a kind of picture containing all the words placed about with synonyms near each other and with lines between them where connections occur. But I went into math rather than English, so I never got very far.
When you want to write to improve your writing, be more careful and intellectual than when you want to write well. I don't think the two are the same. It is sort of like football. In the preseason, you play smart so as to improve, while in the regular season, you play more intuitive. When writing a paper about something you don't particularly find beautiful, my advice would be not to be very careful at all (though it might be well to review things at the end to clean up mistakes when you are more indifferent to mistakes).
In general, I think psychiatric medicine is pushed excessively. Irrational feelings have one benefit—they enable you through experience to learn about your irrational tendencies, thereby enabling you to shape your emotions to be more in line with reason. Take a drug, and a part of you stops growing. Consider cigarette smoking. In the short-run it might make your emotions more cool, but in the long-run, you won’t learn much interesting about how your nature reacts to situations in which coolness is a premium (or the very few but important situations in which it is not), and so you will end up less cool, perhaps forgetting more about how to (naturally) be cool even than you learn with age. The natural causations of coolness and anxiety will be hidden in the smoke.
I like the common-sense approach to improving mental health. Be nice to the brain by resting it. If I should feel unduly close to the edge, I make a point of getting plenty of sleep and not thinking too hard. It is true, though, that obsession can lead one to think too much, and so sometimes forcing oneself to think (a little) about some easy routine matter can be beneficial, not because it involves thinking, but because it replaces a harder thinking.
It is strange to me that you seem to be striving to find something beautiful and profound that you can pull out of your most unpleasant experiences. E. g., “What guarantees that a thought will ever be simple or tidy enough for a sentence”? Well, nothing, of course, that’s obvious and explains, for instance, why mathematicians use a different language. But I don’t have a good handle on your summer of pain, or more particularly what you felt you got from it. But then I think it is a good thing to be sad if you deserve more than you feel you are likely to get. It takes a lot of sanity to be proactive, and to be sad and concerned more about phrasing than silliness may partly just be a sign you are sane enough to feel and live the way you want to rather than as the standard influential people may try to make you think you want to.
Posted by: Stephen A. Meigs on October 29, 2004 12:13 AMGod I can relate to this. Writing is almost something I have to do on autopilot. Recently I've been interested in logic and the rules and contrivances of fallacy. Now it feels like everything I write is riddled with circular reasoning, tenuous transitions, and non-sequitur conclusions. I want to list primary sources for any opinion I assert, want to work long propositional logic algorithms to check my reasoning. And then I get to semantics. Lord, it never ends. But there is such a reaching of nirvana in the perfectly phrased sentence, in a piece that conveys exactly what you were trying to say. I'm sorry, the muse has left me, but I love your blog.
Posted by: Jen on October 29, 2004 11:19 PM