Priorities, Toxicity, And Putting Up With Sh!t
First off, news! My writing partner the Selkie, aka Nina Merrill, gave an interview to Grace Draven the other day. It might be interesting for readers of my Friday posts about process to see how another writer answers some of the same questions. (You can find Nina’s work here and Grace’s here. Yes, they both work for a small press for the moment, yes, I know about the covers. Really. I do.) I absolutely adore Nina–she’s my writing partner and beta reader, after all–and I love Grace’s kick-ass-and-take-no-prisoners attitude. So, enjoy!
Keri Arthur did a great post yesterday at Deadline Dames, titled Achieving The Dream. It’s chock-full of truth and usefulness, and I’m going to shamelessly borrow the idea and talk a little bit about #2 from it.
I don’t know about your family, but mine never really took my writing seriously. In the early years, it was considered ‘my hobby’ and was not something anyone ever thought would amount to anything (including me, most of the time). So, they never really considered it an inconvenience to interrupt my writing sessions for whatever reason. (Keri Arthur)
Yes. Oh, God, yes. I know this. And Keri goes on to hit the cause on the head:
In the early years of my writing, it was totally mine. My family treated my writing as a hobby simply because I did. I might have been serious in my attempt to be published, but I didn’t voice that. I let myself be interrupted. I didn’t treat my writing as a job, I didn’t give it any degree of importance. So if I didn’t, why the hell would any one else? (Keri Arthur)
I’ve talked about this before, but I want to tell you something different today. Yes, most people will get the hint when you start making writing a priority. For example, my hairdressing friend MakeMe came over the other night to hang out. “I’m under deadline,” I said. “Two hundred more words, then I can talk to you.”
She nodded, grabbed a book, and sat down to read while I finished up what I needed to do. There were two parts involved with this: I was willing to enforce my boundary and she was perfectly willing to respect it. Both sides were reasonable. As soon as I finished we settled down for some serious power-lounging and gossip.
But it is not always this way, my chickadees. There are people who just don’t care what your priorities are, and it is hard to deal with them when it comes to your writing time. It is even harder when those people are lovers, spouses, friends, parents, relatives–you name it.
Now, my children have a perfect right to expect to be more important than just about anything. My priorities as a mother trump my priorities as a writer–but they do so reasonably. Writing is how I make the money to feed my kids, after all, so it is actually kind of a mother priority. My kids know I have to work during the day, and they know Mommy’s writing is how she pays the rent. They know they can break in for an emergency, and they know that, in absence of emergency, my attention will be fully theirs once I get my wordcount in. We manage all right.
But what I’m talking about is other adults presuming you’re on earth just to please them. Which is, when you get right down to it, what a lot of people assume about everyone else, to varying degrees. It’s natural for human beings to think so. It’s also natural for you, as a writer, to put up with no sh!t when it comes to getting your words in–or to be conflicted when it seems that you do have to, after all, take some sh!t when it comes to getting your words in.
Therein lies the problem. There will be tension and various passive-aggressive and (let’s face it) aggressive strategies you will face at least once in your writing life. No matter how blunt and up-front you are about writing being a priority, there are some people to whom this will not matter. It’s a good bet that at least one of those people will be in your inner circle–family, close friends, spouse/lover.
I’ve had parents who told me writing was never going to amount much, the artsy-fartsy stuff wouldn’t put food on the table, I should get my head out of the clouds and do what their unfulfilled ambitions dictated so I would be Safe and they would Proud. I’ve had lovers and a spouse resent my affaires d’écrires and pull every possible emotional (and sometimes physical) stunt to pull me away from the keyboard. I’ve had friends come over and ignore my boundaries while I’m writing. I’ve even had friends who dumped me once I got published. (That’s a whole ‘nother blog post.)
You have to weigh this like you weigh other Important Stuff. If your lover tried to keep you from going to your day job or the doctor’s office, how would you react? Is your writing that important to you? It is to me, but your answer might be different. Is your emotional investment in this person enough to justify the toxicity of their overstepping of your boundaries? Are there other reasons to put up with this sort of behavior?
A lover who doesn’t “understand” or who doesn’t respect my boundaries when it comes to writing time is not a lover I’m going to keep, for a variety of reasons that might have nothing to do with writing. Any relationship isn’t going to last long if the other person don’t understand I write to pay my rent and cannot afford to stop. Cause, you know, I need a place to live. Besides, if that person doesn’t care about something so important to me, is it really a relationship that’s going to last? That would be…no. Nope. Nuh-uh.
A family member…well, that’s stickier, and you have to factor obligation and family duty into the equation. I am actually in a strange position because I don’t talk to most of my family at all, again for a variety of reasons. I’m pretty much only in contact with my sisters, and they understand both that I have to write to pay the rent and also that they can break in with an emergency and I’m all over it. (Because other things come and go, but sisters? That’s FOREVER, man.) So I’m saved a lot of the toxic and passive-aggressive crap I had to deal with back before I was writing for an actual living.
Your mileage may vary, of course. Lots of people who call themselves “writers” don’t write, or allow drama and crap like this to impinge on their writing lives and time. I hit a point, right about the time I hit thirty years old, that I just could. not. take. it. any. more. I became a lot more willing to tell people to leave if they weren’t going to respect my time and my work ethic. A lot more willing to draw the line, ignore, or just plain avoid the toxic. It’s an ongoing process, of course, but one I have to spend time on or I don’t produce and if I don’t produce I don’t get to buy groceries or live in my nice house.
It’s amazing how one’s priorities shift once it becomes “write-or-be-homeless.”
You might not be at this point, and your priorities may be different. But if you want to write, do yourself a favor and think a little bit about this issue. Think about what will happen when someone decides their emotional needs are more important than your writing and you don’t agree with them. Think about what might happen when and if you say, “Busy. Got wordcount. You can have my attention when that timer rings.” Think about just how far you’re willing to go, how much you’re willing to make writing a priority. If you want to make a career out of it, these are questions you’re going to have to answer sooner or later.
If you don’t, it’s better to know that sooner than later, right?
Over and out.
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Tags: deadline dames, fellow weirdnesses, Friday Writing, pennyworth advice, shooting from the hip
June 26th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
I’m nodding so hard my head might fall off. There’s so much utter truth in this post.
June 26th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Oh, I can sympathize. The danger is in eventually sounding like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. “When you come in this room, and you hear me typing…” Clack, Clicketty-Clack Clack Click…
After the first few checks showed up in the mail, that helped my family see where it was going. Now, suddenly, it’s Dad’s Office, and my work time gets sacred respect. Especially as the checks get bigger…
June 27th, 2009 at 8:15 am
Yes to all of this. And it may be worse when you’re not making a living – or even close to it – from writing. Then the “Well, it’s not like you’re getting paid” or “No one else takes you seriously” or “Don’t imagine you’ll ever get anywhere” can get really draining.
Which is no reason to listen, of course.
June 27th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Thanks for pimpage, kiddo! I loved Nina’s interview. She’s one of my betas as well, so I have good insight into her critiquing process. Learning about her writing process was a whole ‘nother thing and incredibly fascinating.
I’m with ya on the family distraction. Sometimes it seems like a psychic call goes up in this household when I sit down to crank out a word count. I’ve considered buying a large, vicious dog and parking it in front of the study door, but then I’d have to take of the dog along with the kids and the spousal unit.
June 27th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
I can certainly sympathize with your post, even though I’m single and thus have less in-house family distractions.
However, I do have parents. These days, they are not unsupportive with regards to my writing (though it took some time to get there), but they have next to zero knowledge about the publishing industry. So I get things like “Books are published all the time, so why isn’t any of yours?” or “I just heard/read about this absolutely dreadful sounding book and it got published. So if stuff like that gets published, surely a publisher would take yours.” Never mind that “this absolutely dreadful sounding book” is usually a literary novel targeted at a completely different market.
It also took me some time to make clear that even though I am at the computer all the time anyway, I don’t necessarily have the time to write an e-mail to this or that classmate of my mother’s on her behalf or order this or that item for her right now, especially when none of those things are urgent. Just as it took some time to make it clear to my Dad that even though I am working at the computer, that does not automatically mean that I will help him with this or that business letter right now, unless it’s really urgent. I will write his letter later, but right now I’m doing something else. I don’t mind helping out, but paid work, my PhD and writing take priority (in that order, more or less).
June 29th, 2009 at 9:00 am
As an unpublished writer it’s very difficult to get room and space to breathe in order to do what’s necessary to create Virgina Woof’s ‘room of one’s own’.
Living in a two bedroom apartment where all the rooms are divided up evenly between my significant other and I often leads to contention and shut doors demanding privacy for a clear head beg fights. This is especially true when we both work full time and the writing thing is something I take seriously as a second job.
You’re right when you say that the people around you, should you decide to work at home, think that your space is their space. Switching off a cell phone is easy enough as is turning off the twitter, IM, whatever online communication devise is your savvy but turning people ‘off’ or ‘down’ is another problem entirely.
Anymore my trips home are done so my parents are at work and I am the only one at their place able to sip coffee and write for hours uninterrupted. It is very difficult for people to conceive that the priory is the work even if their is no ‘product’ readily visible. I publish an online novel just for that reason. Sometimes people need to see what you do in order to respect it and even more so, respect the process.
I suppose in the end it is like everything in life. It is an attempt, an endeavor and if we didn’t have the creative demons chasing our heels we’d probably not write at all.