I have come to the conclusion that I should probably stop coming to conclusions. It is a terrible habit. I can distinctly recall the look on my professors' faces, so many years ago now, as they watched me struggle to establish a conclusive endpoint to every conversation. It was this half-pity half-eyeroll expression that often triggered in me the feeling that I had just barely stutter-stepped off the mark again. I would toe so close to the plane of understanding, only to fall away from it entirely by trying to pin the thing down. It took me a while to adjust to the idea that my liberal arts education was not preparing me to present the right answers, but to ask the right questions. The coolest part about writing and reading is the exploration of possibility. It would be made utterly less cool if authors simply regurgitated facts and thesis sentences and punchlines and sent you on your way.
Conversely, in business, people love it when you present and adhere to an idea as if it was the only available possibility. I am sure there are some great progressive enterprises out there that enjoy paying their employees to ponder without conclusion, but my anecdotal experience is that management does not really find thinkers good for the bottom line. It is no wonder that I adapted so well to that environment and moved up the ranks as a result of my willingness to dedicate myself to efficacy, efficiency and righteousness. I am a focused, driven, motivated and successful employee. I am a foolish, bumbling, backwards student.
I struggle with focus when a world of possibility is available. I find myself revisiting my writing with a whole new mind of whatifs, especially if I can only visit sparingly (as in the case of holiday or sick weeks, when the world is rife with interruptions). I guess it makes sense then when I share that I have been avoiding learning about writing since I started my endeavor into the career a year ago. I know that avoidance is pretty juvenile behavior, but I was not quite ready to let go of my self-indulgent righteousness. I mean I have only recently started really staring down the fact that I am new at something again. And I sort of hate that fact. I really liked feeling like an expert, even if it was on the regulatory environment of good laboratory practices for medical device work.
How do I get to be a writing expert? There I go, asking the wrong questions. I have to start learning again. Shame on me for spending years poring over court hearings and preambles and white papers about something that made me feel sick to my stomach most of the time. Shame on me for hundreds of hours and dollars spent pursuing a professional certfication that I did not even really want. I could have been spending that same time continuing my college education with books and seminars and conferences on writing. I love writing. My undergrad thesis was in creative writing. Yet, I did not even require convincing to abandon it. I assumed it was such a natural progression to give up the dream for something that brought home a steady paycheck.
Gross. Clearly I have some unsettled guilt, but that's enough self-effacement for one blog post.
Now I am reading. I have a pretty decent unfinished first draft to one novel, and 10,000 words started on another that could lead to a promising short story. I also have been doing the leg work to put together a third serial project, and I purchased some new writing software. That being said, I have no idea how to do any of this. So, I am reading. I picked up Eudora Welty's and Stephen King's books, both titled On Writing, and borrowed this amazing plot and structure book by James Scott Bell from a friend. I am relearning how to ask questions and revel in ambiguity. I am unlearning the mindset that made me an expert and sitting in my humility in order to make something good happen. We can only hope.
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