Sitting Past that Twitchy Feeling

Mindset shifts, actual hourglass sand, Lynda Barry, my early poetic LOTR fanfic, upcoming Conferences (Seattle! Toronto!), and a beautiful sea stew.

Hello Friends,

I moved to Vancouver to start my job at UBC in August 2020, but it’s only this term that I’ve fully set up and settled into my campus office. At first, I was teaching exclusively online, and setting up my classes and settling into my apartment took precedence. The campus office was entirely unfurnished, so I needed to buy bookshelves, unpack boxes of books, get a desk, etc. Sometimes I wonder why this felt like such a hurdle. But then I take a look at the to-do lists that were involved in an international move with two small children during a pandemic, and I’m like “oh, yeah, no wonder you’re still tired.”

But this past summer, I decided it was time to let the kids have their own rooms. This meant giving up my home office (sob!) and shifting to biking into my campus office every day. This has mostly been really good: I’m getting to know my colleagues more (though maybe only the director is here as often as I am), I have a clearer separation between work and not-work (or, at least, I’m trying to. My kids might say I’m still on my laptop after dinner too often), and I love having my books lined up on their shelves instead of packed in boxes. I’m developing a rotation of tasty packed lunches.¹ I’ve made my peace with having to wash my dishes in the bathroom sink.² And I’m figuring out how to make my office not just a lesson-planning, email-answering, office-hours-meeting space, but also a writing space.

When I was working from home, I’d often write first thing in the morning, still in pajamas, before I had fully “entered” the day. But now that I’m coming into the office, I’ve had to figure out other strategies. The challenge here is partly just time: how many things need to be done and how much time do I have to do them? But it’s also a question of headspace. Many of the things I need to do feel both clear and loud: other people expect them, I can be fairly confident that if I do them they will be done to a standard I’m happy with, and I can have a reasonably good idea how long they will take.

All too often, writing feels like it’s none of those things: no one really expects it, it may or may not go well on any given day, and I have no clear sense of how long it will take to get to a point where I’m happy with it. But if I don’t do it, I get grumpy and feel myself shrinking.

To enter writing, I need to be ok with not knowing how well it’s going, or even if it’ll ultimately go anywhere. Here are two things I’ve found that help:

1. Making a container of time that I somehow convince myself is separate and different from my other time. This often involves an actual timer. For years, I’ve used an online pomodoro timer. I’m realizing now that I use timers not so much for “productivity” as for creating a time-space where task completion isn’t the driving force. As I’ve been doing more writing by hand, I recently got this hourglass. Something feels very right about watching actual sand trickle slowly down. While the sand is suspended, other things can wait.

   

2. Picking at least a few days when I can write before I do any other work tasks, and NOT CHECKING MY EMAIL BEFORE I START WRITING. This is where the “twitchy feeling” comes in. But what if someone has sent me a time-sensitive email? some part of me asks. Well, ok, but when you’re teaching in the morning, it’s ok to let an email wait, so why not when you’re writing? I tell that part. At first, I often have an “I can’t check my email” or “I’m not allowed to check my email” feeling. If I’m on the computer, my hand might almost automatically move to open a new tab and type in the university webmail address. But I can catch it in time, bring it back. And then after a while (both on any given day and over the course of the term), my feeling shifts to “I don’t have to check my email” and “I’m allowed to be unavailable for a time. I’m allowed to focus on this one thing for a time.” I don’t need to make the twitchy feeling go away or banish the voice that says your tasks are piling up! I just need to sit past it, to draw my focus back to the work until the twitchy feeling subsides.

More and more, I’ve also been attempting to design assignments that invite students to enter writing (and revision!) as a different relationship to time. Like me, they’re often squeezed by responsibilities and commitments. And we’re all plagued by what Lynda Barry in What It Is calls “the two questions”: Is this good? Does this suck?

What helps you “be able to stand not knowing long enough to let something alive take shape”?

Let Me Join You for a Walk!

Or, you know, keep you company while you do the dishes or on your commute or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I had the pleasure of being a guest recently on two of my favorite podcasts: Writers Read Their Early Sh*t with Jason Emde and Of Poetry with Han Vanderhart. Both Jason and Han were warm curious hosts, and I left these conversations feeling invigorated and reminded of why I keep trying (to read, to write, to make sense of things).

And yes, I share some truly embarrassing early poems, including high school love sonnets and a poem I wrote at age nine about a Lord of the Rings character who was cut from the movie versions.

On the topic of podcasts, teachers or folks in critique groups who use versions of Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process might want to check out Episode 104 of Rachel Zucker’s Commonplace Podcast (another favorite! these conversations are so rich!) on CRP with Liz Lerman and John Borstel. I’ll definitely be linking to this one to give future classes a sense of how we’re approaching group critique and why. I love how Lerman talks about researching feedback methods by asking people “Why are there some people you can hear anything from?”

Conferences Coming Up

I’ll be participating in two panels at AWP in Seattle: “Pedagogies of Pleasure and Play in the Creative Writing Classroom” (with Diana Khoi Nguyen, Catina Bacote, and Rachel Himmelheber) and “How many?! Proven strategies for teaching large lecture Creative Writing classes” (with Danielle Geller, John Vigna, and Elaine Chang). If you’re planning to be in Seattle in March 2023, I’d love to connect!

I’m also organizing a panel on “The Role of Reading in Creative Writing Classes” for the ACCUTE (Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English) conference in Toronto at the end of May 2023.

This panel invites creative writing teachers to share approaches and assignments that reimagine the role of reading in creative writing classrooms. Let’s talk about collaborative annotations, commonplace books, student-directed craft apprenticeships, use of audio and video, and more.

Proposals are due on November 15th. Please share with anyone you think might be interested, or consider sending along a proposal yourself! Here’s the call with details and submission links:

ACCUTE Call For Papers On The Role Of Reading In Cw Classes

79.7KB ∙ PDF file

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Download the Call for Papers with details.

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And if you live in or near Toronto, hit reply and let me know if you’d like to meet up for coffee (around May 27-30, 2023). Or send me your recommendations for delicious snacks!

A “Beautiful Sea Stew” for Fall Coziness

In The Maggie B, a lovely children’s book (and a thorough refutation of the idea that narrative requires obvious conflict), Maggie makes her brother James a “beautiful sea stew” from the vegetables she grows on the boat and the fish and lobster she catches from the sea. On a recent visit to Oregon, I made my sister (and my mom and kids) a sea stew of my own. Here’s a loose and riff-able recipe. Soups and stews are very forgiving when it comes to swaps and substitutions, so just work with whatever you have around/can get ahold of easily!

Ingredients

• 3-4 strips of bacon (if you like it)

• an onion or a couple of leeks or a shallot, diced or sliced

• some fresh thyme leaves (nice if you’ve got them)

• a good big bunch of waxy potatoes like Yukon golds, cut into smallish dice (no need to peel them)

• about half a cup of white wine (or rosé or dry vermouth) if you’ve got some

• water with some salt (or broth or bouillon if you’ve got them)

• salt and black pepper

• maybe 1-2 cups of corn kernels or more if you’d like (frozen is fine)

• cream (very nice) or some half-and-half or even milk

• maybe 1-2 cups of whatever fish or shellfish you’ve got cut into fairly even pieces (I’ve used cod, shrimp, salmon, and combinations of these)

• fresh flat-leaf parsley

• buttered toast or saltines = yes, good

1. Cut the bacon into little squares (I usually use scissors for this), and cook it in a big pot with a little bit of oil on medium heat until the fat renders and it’s starting to get crispy. Scoop out the pieces with a spoon and set them aside for later. Keep the rendered fat in the pot.

2. [If you’re not using bacon, add a few tablespoons of butter or olive oil to the pot.] Add your chopped onion/shallots/leeks and sauté until they’re soft and transparent, about 7-8 minutes at a nice medium or medium-low heat. You can toss some salt and thyme leaves in if you’d like.

3. Next, add your potatoes, stir them into the onions and let them cook for about five minutes, giving them a stir now and then.

4. Add the white wine if you’re using it, and let it cook off a bit. If you’re not using it, skip straight to step 5.

5. Add your water or broth until it covers the potatoes by an inch or so, and cook at a gentle simmer for about 12 minutes or until the potatoes are just tender.

6. Add the corn and turn the heat up to bring your stew back to a simmer/heat the corn through.

7. Add the cream (or whatever dairy) and let it warm up to a gentle simmer. Don’t let it boil.

8. Add your fish/shellfish and simmer just until cooked, giving a gentle stir a few times to make sure the heat is even. This likely will only take 3-6 minutes, depending on the thickness of your fish.

9. Toss the crispy bacon back in. Add some chopped parsley. Taste and add salt or pepper if needed.

10. Eat with buttered toast or saltines/oyster crackers. This is even better when it’s had a chance to sit for a few hours or overnight.

11. Light a candle. Pretend you’re on a boat and there’s a storm outside, but you’re safe and dry with someone you love, and no one expects you to check your email.

A beautiful sea stew made with shrimp

yours,

Bronwen

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1. Perhaps a future newsletter on these?

2. We have a lounge area with a fridge and a microwave and a water cooler, but no sink.