Why Aren't You Writing?

Story board for talk.

This was the subject of an email in my box on Sunday afternoon. It's from a series directed at young faculty that I subscribe to (because while I'm not a young faculty member any more, it's good to know what advice is floating around out there for my junior colleagues). I always find it somewhat ironic that these emails land on Sunday afternoons when their stated raison d'etre is to help academics stop working endlessly, while still getting tenured and promoted. But then again, there I am, looking at my email on a Sunday.

The email repeats the basic advice this group gives embedded in a cautionary tale: write at least 30 minutes every weekday, do not let anyone or anything keep you from your appointed task. Or else you will be the tearful and unaccomplished academic featured in the email.

Why am I not writing? I haven't posted anything on the blog since Easter, which is not to say I haven't written anything —I have. An essay for Nature Chemistry on chirality, three talks in the last two weeks, a reflection for a retreat. A stack of letters of recommendation (rec letters are a genre in their own right, so should count!). And a final exam. Which then generated a thousand pages of grading.

Why am I not writing? In large part because the pneumonia disrupted my regular writing habits, first literally taking the air from my lungs, and then stealing the metaphorical wind from my sails as I recovered from it, careful not to do too much even as the work I didn't manage while I was sick mocked me from the corners of my desk. As of yesterday, I seem to have finally caught my breath.

I have missed the rhythm of exploratory writing as well as the vastness that open up when I'm not pressed up hard against a deadline.  I opened up a blank screen this morning, intending to sketch out a piece, but founds myself pouring whole chunks into it, like water finally freed from the ice dams of late spring. Cool and clear and overflowing.