Today, I am celebrating making a deep dent in the depths of papers stacked around my office, and hiding in the desk drawers. 🥳🎆🎉
At the start of this month, I gave myself the tiny goal of throwing away ten pieces of paper a day. That could be anything: receipts, ticket stubs, old mail, anything. The tiny goal got me started, and was on my mind, though it didn’t happen every day.
Today, that little goal was like melting snow meeting a crack that burst a dam. Those ten pieces of paper turned into hundreds. Old papers flowed from bins to garbage or binders. And once I cleared out a bin, I refilled it from desk drawers. I didn’t stop until my left-hand drawers were completely emptied of random stacks of paper and clutter.
Time, the great teacher, gave me a new perspective on what only months ago I was calling a mess. As I started going through the piles, and throwing out the garbage, I was surprised by the mass of work I was looking at. For someone who says she doesn’t revise, just moves on to the next idea, I saw story after story with revisions and edits written all over them. I saw pages and pages of notes for revisions of novel after novel, poem after poem.
I thought it would be fun, and good practice, to talk about today’s discoveries using the tools of Depth and Complexity that I celebrated in my last post.
🔑Language of the Discipline – I write notes on any piece of paper handy. It was fun to find pages and pages of scrap paper folded in half with word lists filling both sides. I found one with words that only have the vowel “o.” I found many with abstract nouns organized in different ways.
🔎Details – In many of the pages I chose to keep, I found interesting sensory details highlighted in yellow. I also found notes taken at meetings that I looked up before I threw the pieces of paper away. I think details is an area where I can work on depth.
🏁Patterns – I found the transparencies I made of my photographs to use as text-masks for blackout poetry. I found the further attempts at creating “Nets of Possibilities.” But deeper than seeing patterns on the papers, I recognized some patterns of my process:
- I collect every resource I think will help me, but seldom fill in the things I print out (as if they are precious and limited, so I don’t want to use them up)
- I revise and submit, but once a piece is rejected (more than once), I am slow to work on it more, or submit it again without revision
- I get started on lots of ideas when it comes to poetry, especially creating my own forms, but don’t put the time in to really follow through
❓Unanswered Questions – As evidenced by the stacks of papers I chose to save, and those I threw away, the unanswered questions I’m still striving to explore are:
How do I turn all my novel drafts into finished novels that I’m proud of?
How do I improve each of my short stories?
How do I get in the flow and become more prolific?
What changes can I make so all of this work easier, more fun, and finished?
But the real, ❓unanswerable question is: Will all my effort and time have value to enough people for me to live well and continue to be able to create art?
📏Rules: From the papers that I kept and sorted, I concluded that I both like to follow the rules, and make up my own rules. Like painters who made sure they could copy the old masters and paint with visual realism, but chose to create something that can’t be recorded with a camera, I want my innovations to be extension of mastery. However, unlike photography where I’m having a blast breaking all the rules, I find fiction and poetry more challenging: both learning all the rules, and enjoying breaking them.
📈Trends: The trends I noticed going through my stacks of stories and poems were connected to events and challenges I became attached to. My short story drafts almost all happened in a short period of time around a contest. My poem drafts happened daily in April and October, but they were all posted online, so then I would print them all out and chop them up and see if there was anything interesting there, but didn’t go much further. I also discovered that I am somewhat organized in weird ways. The piles of things I’m not ready to be rid of yet, or work on again, clump together by project or idea, but then just sit there in their piles.
⚖️Ethics: The ethics of today’s adventure are about good/bad, value/worthless, and garbage ethics such as land fills vs. burning: If someone needs heat and could create warmth by burning all this paper would it be more ethical to drive somewhere to get it to them, or is paper degrading in a landfill mulch to help the earth work at breaking down garbage? These types of decisions are not easy. But today, filling a plastic garbage bag with paper and other things, cleaning up my office and ridding me of some unneeded past, made me feel so good I wanted to share joy and celebration with you. The plastic bag is still in the office and may end up creating heat for me later in the winter if it ever gets that cold.
🏛️Big Ideas: The big idea of today’s celebration of depth is: depth can be found through digging. If you have piles of paper like I do: Don’t be afraid, or tell yourself you don’t have time: Start digging (and discarding), you may be surprised by the work you’ve done and learn a lot about your process.
I have at least three more days like today to get through my stacks of paper in my office, just to find out what’s garbage, and what isn’t, but this made it a fun celebration of discovery. I can also see how taking the time to review everything I choose to keep is part of exploring depth.
What new depth have you reached today? Any depths you want to explore, but haven’t found a way in yet? I look forward to the depths of your comments.
Experience Writing 