Roundtable: "Ungodly" Writing & Other Ways to Shake Thing Up
This month we talk about ways to shake up your life.
In January, I signed up for the 5:30 am Ungodly Writing Hour Writing Club, sponsored by the Writing Co-Lab. In the online description, Sara Lippman, the leader, didn’t promise magic:
Nothing sexy here … the trick is showing up. If you are curious about ungodly writing — then join me in my bathrobe. (Cameras off.) I will write; you will write. There is solidarity in numbers.
I was struggling to restart my writing practice in the new year. And my husband out of town for two weeks. Motivation + opportunity. I signed up and on Day 1 logged on.
Here’s how it went:
Day 1: Alarm sounds 5:25 a.m. My face is mashed into the pillow. I roll onto my back, blink hard, push myself upright. My laptop’s on the bedstand; I flip it open and log on. I blink at the screen but no one but Sara’s camera is on. She’s dropped a question in the chat:
Have you set intentions for this experiment?
My intentions? To wake up & log on. I hadn’t thought past that. I start typing whatever comes into my head on what my current project needs.
Day 2: Armed with Day 1’s ideas, by end of Day 2 I’ve got 3 pages. All about the Victorian house I renovated in the ‘90s, and the items I found that the owner left behind in 1908. I’ve been thinking a long time about my decade’s long obsession with the old house, the Irish tenor who once lived there. What was his story?
Day 4: Well, wow. I woke up without an alarm at 5:25am. And 45 minutes later, I’ve got 2 more pages on my project. These are the ideas that typically flit through my head during the day and fly out the window. But already I’m wondering if I can keep up a 5:30 am writing habit for 2 full weeks. Yesterday I almost dozed off at the day job.
Day 7: The 5:30 alarm wrenches me from a deep sleep. I fumble my way online & check the comments in the chat. Is anyone else feeling what I am? Gone is my “Wowee, I’m doing this!” Now it’s more like “Oh God, can I keep doing this?” Then something clicks. I start to work on my project.
It stayed like that—one morning I’m up, the next I’m barely hanging on. But by the end of my 2-week experiment, something in me had changed. Even though I slowly returned to rising at 7, I felt a big shift in my priorities. Two months later, I continue to write the 1st hour of each day (in addition to my usual longer weekend writing sessions). Two months on, I’ve drafted 5 essays. I’ve heard from Sara Lippman there’s another Ungodly Writing Hour planned for spring; and I will sign up for it.
So, my question for you is: Have you ever tried something to radically upset your creative life? How did it turn out, and what did you learn?
Jan: I have been inspired by so many writers who get up first thing and write, and yet my attempts have failed time and time again. I’ve learned that my “discipline muscles” just don’t wake up that early. Although I generally start writing at about 10 a.m., my productivity seems to be permanently aligned with the 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. deadline writing I did as a young journalist. I also tried the advice of keeping a notebook in my purse and jot down interesting details I see or fragments of sentences I compose. I ended up with lots of teeny-tiny notebooks with scribbles on about five pages before they all went blank. So instead, if I look up at the sky on South Beach and see the sun setting over the ocean and the moon rising to the east, I try to start a poem as soon as I get home, while it’s still in my memory. The only somewhat radical adjustment that I’ve successfully adopted is to write every day—just never early in the morning.
Tracey: Hmm… radically upset? I guess the most “radical upset” I did to my creative life was starting writing. I’m not one of those people who grew up knowing they wanted to be a writer, keeping a journal from the time they were old enough to hold a crayon in their hand. I’m the person who loved reading with a passion but writing? Forget it. Instead, I fed my creative side by trying—not at the same time!—painting (watercolors and oils, my mom and sister are WAY better), pottery (throwing small and usually misshapen vessels), tile-making (more successful but tedious), knitting (last effort was making silly winter hats that no one would wear), silversmithing (ooh, want get back into doing that), beading (boring), photography (love posting pics on Instagram/Facebook), weaving (short-lived effort resulting in one pillow), and, most recently, glittering shoes for the Mardi Gras Krewe of Muses Parade in New Orleans.
What I learned is that a creative endeavor–no matter what kind–brings a sense of satisfaction that can’t be matched by anything, unless it’s baking a perfect homemade chocolate cake :)
Kate: There have been multiple times in my life when my creative practice was upset, but not by choice such as your early-morning writing exercise. Most of the changes were brought on by having to move, sometimes quite far from where I had been living. Not easy for anyone. Layer onto that some monumental losses, and the word “upset” is the most accurate for what happened to my creative practices.
But the most recent change occurred when I sold my yarn & needlework shop in NY, packed up my big, overstuffed, quirky 1840 house where I’d lived for nearly 15 years, and moved what I could fit into a sweet but small old house in Vineyard Haven that is owned by my partner. On so many levels, I could not have been luckier.
Still, it has taken a very long time, it feels, to get all my creative tools – fabric, sewing notions and supplies, sewing machines, thread-so-much-thread, paints, mark-makers, paper, canvases, needlepoint yarn, stitchery supplies, portfolios, works in progress, books, tools, and a tea kettle – all into one space. It’s the first time in my life that it has all been here with me to use at will, on any whim, at any time. (There is more at home: way too much knitting yarn, drawing papers and pencils, and my writing notebooks, favorite pencils, and a laptop.)
I’m still organizing the space, but it’s finally getting close to being workable. I haven’t made much yet. I don’t know if I will sew or draw or paint or stitch or just sit here in my favorite chair thinking about it. Time will soon tell, I think. What I have learned from this most recent shake-up is that I never ever want to move again.
Readers: Have you tried anything radical? Or do you have a still-unfulfilled notion that might turn your life upside down? Share it in the comments below!
Remarkable. I wouldn't be able to find the coffee pot much less my keyboard.
Very persuasive, Brenda! Your writing alone is so engaging that I trust every word. I do respond to the structure and "requirement" to show up and get words on the page. I used Julia Cameron Morning Pages for over a year and it was a huge boost!