Fig Tree

[pegkerr]

I stood in the kitchen tonight, listening to Fiona pitch a tantrum in the living room over her report on Italy. (She became unglued when we told her that she would undoubtedly not be able to type up all the pages she had written in time to hand it all in when it is due tomorrow. She cannot type that fast, no matter how much she insisted that she could. And of course, crying hysterically as she was, she wasn't writing it by hand very fast, either.)

Too depressed to even face making dinner, I poured myself a fingerwidth of Baileys Irish Creme and meditated gloomily on fig trees, or at least the fig tree in the text from the gospel text this past Sunday (Luke 13:6-8):

A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, 'Lo, these three years I have come seeking fruit upon this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down; why should it use up ground?' And he answered him, 'Let it alone, sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure. And if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.'

I thought about the ambiguity in this story that I always see. The gospel text is both a reprieve (wait a year) and a threat (and if it doesn't bear in a year, cut it down).

My fig tree is bearing no fruit. I am not writing my novel. I don't want to work on it, I just want to dive into reading fiction to escape the stress of my life. I thought about applying the text to my situation, trying to make myself write the book in a year, but I couldn't even find it within myself to make that much of a commitment, which I found utterly depressing. Hence, the Baileys. How long can I continue to call myself a writer if I am not working on fiction? At what point do they come and cut my fig tree down? I hold my day job, as badly matched to my skills and temperament as it is, on the basis of the argument that, well, it's all right that I'm a legal secretary, because I'm really a writer. I just don't write fast enough to pay the bills; this takes care of those. But if I'm not writing at all, what then? If I'm not a writer, what am I?

elisem, I'm never gonna get to wear that necklace that I had promised myself for finishing the ice palace book.

All I want to do is read. Compulsively, obsessively. Not write. And I feel like such an utter fraud when people say I'm a writer.

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

Well, it says that you can cut it down, not that you must.

If I may be so obnoxious as to offer suggestions along with sympathy... your schedule sounds pretty bloody hectic a lot of the time. I have noticed in myself a tendency to stop writing, to stop /wanting/ to write, if I don't write at more or less the same time every day. The first couple weeks of sitting down and making myself write can be rough, when I'm getting back into the thing, but I do a lot of mind-games with myself: "You only have to write 100 words. Anybody can write 100 words. Oop, you wrote 152. Okay, you'd better go on to 200." That sort of thing.

Keeping a low wordcount goal helps me, too. Even if it's pure crap, it gets me back into the habit and reminds me that I really do like doing this. I usually get up an hour early in the morning so I can write (which is easier for me than many people, because I have no children and work from home), which provides me with a set time to do some writing in.

I donno if your schedule would allow for something like that, but it's an idea, anyway. And if you just wanted to vent, well, I'll slink off now, after offering hugs. *hugs*

(I dreamed last night that I met you in an airport. You were wearing a black t-shirt which had a picture of yourself which was not one on the ones you posted recently, but which was reminiscent of them, and somehow I recognized the t-shirt, then recognized you. Then I gibbered, which seems to be what I do when I meet writers I admire. It was an entertaining dream, anyway! You were very nice to me. :))

[bethynyc.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, I gibber too, and I meet authors fairly regularly to gibber at them.

Peg, you are a writer. You have a story to tell and I feel so sure that you will tell it. What inspired you about the ice palace? Can you go back to the source of inspiration again and get re-inspired?

hugs

[redbird]

Peg, you are a writer. You will finish this book, and people will read it.

Also, may I borrow the "Use Well the Days" icon?

Yes

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Yes, certainly you may take the icon.

[ctrinity.livejournal.com]

I know I dont know you well but heres something I was told once, which sometimes helps.

You're a writer when you wake up in the morning and you think about writing.

To me this means even if you're getting up and thinking about the fact that you should be writing and you're not. You feel the need, the urge to express yourself through the written word, and that is what makes you a writer.

That might not help at all, but I tend ot think of a writer more as someone inclined to read and write, than someone who has written such and such or is writing . I wouldnt consider a math textbook writer to be a writer, just because s/he has written a book. I think it's more to do with an innate urge to express and understand the world in terms of language and literature.

Also, the more you read, the better your writing will undoubtedly be, so it's not entirely lost time if you need to dive into literature for a while to recover some of the strength and courage and passion it takes to write.

Being a writer

[umrguy42.livejournal.com]

I don't really know you, except from a few things seen on lmbujold, but your info says you've already written two novels. Last time I checked, that makes you a writer. Kinda like in Komarr, talking about being a genius - it only takes once for you to be one.

[kalquessa.livejournal.com]

I bought The Wild Swans with some of my birthday money a few weeks ago. Gave up fiction for Lent (because I am a masochist) so I have not read the greater portion of it yet. However, based on what I've been able to burn through on the past few Sundays, I am going to affirm that you are, in fact, a writer. More, you are going on the "Why can't I write like this, dammit?" shelf with Gaiman, McKinnley and Tolkien.

Anyway, there is the fish block. If you want proof that you are going to write the ice palace book no matter what stumbling-blocks you encounter, remember the fish block. You simply have no choice in the matter. Fate has spoken!

[d-aulnoy.livejournal.com]

Dear Peg:

We've never actually met, but I enjoyed Emerald House Rising and The Wild Swans enormously (both as a silversmith who's interested in magical theory, and as a scholar of fairy tales). Just keep people like me who are waiting for the next one eagerly, who would love to read about ice palaces or any other thing that you chose to write about in mind, no matter how discouraging the process can be. Being a writer means being a reader ... and, occasionally, a bit down on oneself. Just not too much - that's what the Bailey's is there for.

Best,
Helen

[aome.livejournal.com]

Hee. Our churches apparently follow the same Gospel schedule. :)

Agreed with the person who said you *can* cut it down, but not that you have to. You *are* a writer, but it doesn't mean you have to be writing every single day of your life or even every week to qualify for the title. You have published two (wonderful!) novels and you speak to people about writing - you know what it's about, what it involves.

Writing is something that requires a lot of energy for anyone. It's a creative, productive, active thing. Reading is passive. Even if you are living and breathing whatever it is you are reading, it is still passive, creating in your head those images that *someone else* put there. Someone else is doing/has done the work. And right now, with recent deaths, illnesses, dark winter days, long working nights, and whatever else you've had to deal with, it's not surprising that what you want is to *receive* for a change - have someone hand you the story for your enjoyment. Receptive is always easier than productive - ask anyone who is learning a new language. I think you need to cut yourself a little slack. The story *will* happen if it is something you care about - and it sounds like you do. However, everyone has limits to their energy, and it sounds like, for the moment, all of yours is being sucked off by Real Life. Read. Give yourself something back and enjoy it. Fill the vacuum for now and, one day, I imagine you may find yourself finally become sated, able to produce pieces of your own tale again. I waited patiently for OotP, despite the much longer wait time than what the previous books had had, because I've always felt that creativity can't be rushed, and it's better to wait for something *good*. So - just try to have patience with yourself. I am an enormous hypocrite for suggesting it, as I'm often very hard on myself, but if I can't help myself very well, perhaps I can at least try to help someone else. :)

[vass]

Hee. Our churches apparently follow the same Gospel schedule. :)

What I was about to say. Must be a Lent thing.

And.. yeah, Peg. Have a hug. I'm a singing student with the kind of voice that only *really* matures about about forty. I'm twenty-three. I've been flailing at singing lessons for nine years now. You don't have to tell me about despairing and thinking it'll never come. I'm certain that that verse is about mercy, and about not making irrevocable decisions out of anger or despair or frustration.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

We-ell...some people actually find it easier to deal with the productive rather than receptive part of a foreign language. Me, for instance.

Not that I disagree with your main premise...Peg, taking time to recharge doesn't mean that you're not a writer!

[misia.livejournal.com]

I'll see your Luke and raise you some of good old Rabbi Tarfon z"l (first century CE):

The day is short, the work is much, the workers are lazy, the reward is great and the Master is pressing... It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task, but neither are you free to absolve yourself from it.

You're a writer, Peg, and you will continue to be one. Perhaps this book is not the book that's supposed to come out of you right now, perhaps it is. Time will tell. Be kind to yourself, and remember that the only thing you really have to do is to keep trying.

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

You quoted:"It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task, but neither are you free to absolve yourself from it."

I like this so much I changed my screen saver to repeat that to remind me. Thank you. Could you tell me more about Rabbi Tarfon z"l?

[misia.livejournal.com]

Actually, I can't tell you much about Tarfon because not a whole lot is known; he was one of the rabbis of the Second Temple, and one of the earlier generation of those rabbis at that. He is reputed to have been quite wealthy, and was a kohen (member of the priestly class) on both sides of his family, and was noted to use an unusual (for Judaism) method of teaching which owed a significant debt to the Socratic method. Whether he was well-read/polyglot enough to have encountered the Socratic method through reading in Greek or whether he evolved a question-based teaching method on his own, I really couldn't tell you. He was a mentor and colleague to the renowned Rabbi Akiva, of whom much more biographical detail is known (and who was a far more prolific writer and more important scholar, in the grand scheme of things).

RT is amply represented in the Pirkei Avot, the Sayings of the Fathers (*not* the same book as the one in the early Christian tradition!), a collection of bits and pieces of rabbinical wisdom, primarily ethical teachings, that were not necessarily attached to any specific bits of Torah. The bit I quoted is one of the more famous lines from the Pirkei Avot.

The 'z"l', by the by, is not actually part of his name. It's transliterated Hebrew shorthand for "zechor tzaddik v'kadosh l'varacha" which is a phrase of respect customarily stuck in after the mention of the name of a deceased holy/righteous person meaning "may the name of this holy tzaddik be for a blessing."

[folk.livejournal.com]

My fig tree is bearing no fruit.

Gosh, Peg, that's because God Hates Figs! Perhaps you should have a pear tree instead -- it comes with free partridge!

I know what you mean, though -- I too am in what I call "back brain mode" on stuff, and haven't been in front brain mode for what seems like far too long now. My problem is that I don't want to write crap, because I want to be proud of my book. I'm pretty sure I could sell crap, but I don't want to.

Hmmm

[talking-sock.livejournal.com]

We don't know each other, but I value the heart in your LJ even apart from reading you because you're a writer :-) So... you touched a nerve. The other day I heard someone on NPR saying, "If you don't have love, all you have is your resume. Which has been more or less my mantra ("less" in that I never said it so pithily) since I accepted I won't get true love, while my resume is damn fine and gets better every year. But I stopped writing years ago, and this is my biggest regret, besides occasionally wondering about where I missed out on love. I hope to get back to it-- which makes me further away than you, and yet still in the same country, perhaps.

I just ordered your books on Amazon, too. FYI.

[fairmer.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, when's the last time you just read "compulsively, obsessively"? And didn't let any of the writing stuff get in the way?

Most writers I know of started writing because they like to read. Obsessively and compulsively.

Maybe reading is the manure.

Maybe fruit isn't whole novels. Maybe fruit is just writing, not writing whole books or things that sell, and you have to fertilize your tree for a year. Maybe?

[leaina.livejournal.com]

Maybe reading is the manure.

What she said. Our church had the same Gospel last Sunday too, and part of the sermon was about looking around our life to see what's bearing fruit and what's not; but the other part was about nurturing the non-bearing trees, if we think they could produce worthwhile fruit.

And God's time is not our time: remember that the year is metaphorical too. It seems to me that working in a law firm with a big trial underway could be the equivalent of a really bad winter. The poor fig tree just has to survive this part, and gets to have spring and summer come and go before it's expected to produce anything.

Sometimes just letting go of feeling guilty--deciding it's okay not to do something for a while--is the best way to find your motivation again.

(P.S. As with everyone else here, I read your LJ because I enjoy it. How can you not be a writer when you have so many readers?)

[merryharper.livejournal.com]

You're a writer because that's what you are, not what you do.

You're a writer because you have conversations with people who aren't there. You're a writer because you stand in the middle of the grocery store aisle until you have the exact phrase that captures what strikes you between the Clorox and the All detergent bottles. You're a writer because you pick up books in the bookstore in anticipation and after sampling a few pages are outraged at the quality. Not angry at the insult to the reader's intelligence -- angry that the writer had no standards.

You're a writer because if you go without writing -- be it part of a book, or your livejournal, or a letter, or a personal note all to yourself -- for too long, you get edgy without knowing why, and it's only after you treat yourself to a paragraph or a page that you realize that there's a balance that was restored.

You can tell yourself you're not a writer based on statistical proof, but you will be lying. Not the right measuring stick.


Some books need a rising period, like bread. Tuck it up in a soft cloth, put it in the back of the cupboard, and when you come back to it after a time of writing something else (a bit of doggerel verse, a long treatise on the Chaucerian influence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a series of exercises you set yourself that you'll never show another soul because they're Just That Stupid), you'll pull it out and say "Oh! THAT'S the shape it was meant to be," and for a couple of days no one will be able to get any sense out of you, even if you're conscientious enough to come out long enough to fulfill expected obligations.


Looking forward to reading what grows,
and hope you finished up that lovely bottle of Bailey's Cream,

Meredith

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

Anyone who can write two publishable novels while raising children and working is a writer. (Note: the Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base credits you with three novels: one is The Wild Swans and another is The Wild Swan.)

[pameladean]

You will always be a writer. You won't, you can't, unwrite the books and stories you have already written. If (God forbid) you died tomorrow, you would be a writer in history; if (God forbid) you never wrote another word, you would still be a writer in memory and in history, your words would be read and worth reading.

How to write more words, that is a very real dilemma; how to get out of a complex and intractable trap, that is a very real dilemma. But you are a writer. I have your books, and I know.

Pamela

[kiwiria.livejournal.com]

Everything I could've said seems to be said by those above, so just *hugs*

[elfundeb.livejournal.com]

You are a writer because you write and people (like me) want to read what you have to say.

Here's how I wanted to respond to your question a week or two ago about why 400 people have friended your LJ:

It's because you write wonderful and beautifully written vignettes of everyday life that remind us that sometimes the most important thing is how we deal with the spilled milk.

You're a writer because you address things by writing about them. I’m not a writer by nature – I’m a thinker who needs a scribe to catch my ideas and I learn every day from reading how you put your thoughts into words, and how you sometimes struggle with the writing process.

I find reading something seemingly unrelated to my task can be a great way to pull my thoughts together in a subconscious way, so perhaps a bit of reading is just what the doctor ordered.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

This is the nice thing about writing as compared to some other exercises: not doing it can't erase doing it. The words you have on the page can't be unwritten. The writing of them is stronger than anything you haven't written lately.

The tree has produced figs. Now it's a matter of finding out what combination of manure and watering and soil care and pruning makes it bear more figs. You are not in the figless state.

[dormouse-in-tea.livejournal.com]

I read this entry, and I can see what you and your family were doing. I can see the characters, and feel the emotions. If this were a passage from a novel, it would be doing its job, and doing it well.

You are a writer. You are a writer all the time, because you clearly construct your thoughts in a way that shows others what the memory will make you feel. Sometimes you put the words on paper, sometimes you don't.

I'm looking forward to the ice palace book. But if I might be so bold...I think you're fixating on it so much, that you don't even see the other writing you do, when you look for proof that you are a writer!

Being blocked on what you actually want to write at the particular moment is really extremely annoying, I know that first hand right at this very moment--but it doesn't take away your writery-ness.

And now that I have been Humpty Dumpty and made my own word for the day, I shall go.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Are you sure you don't need the necklace now, so you could put it on when you sit down to write? That helps me.

Would it be possible for Rob to commit to looking after the children one complete evening a week, and for the children to commit to leaving you alone to work on that evening, and for you to write in that time?

It seems to me that you've been doing the pre-writing process on this story for quite a while, and brainstorming, and that's all stuff that can fit in the cracks, but actually writing takes actual time. Pat Wrede still talks about how you wrote while breast-feeding -- that was the first thing I ever heard about you.

The other thing is that of course you're a writer, and you'd be a writer even if you don't complete another novel until your daughters go off to college. There isn't only this year. There isn't anyone coming to cut down your fig tree. If you want to lie fallow you can, though you don't want to, but if events force you to lie fallow you can. I think that 'writers write' meme, along with 'if you can give up you're not a real writer' is in some ways pernicious, because it makes people feel they need to be committed to it in some Romantic Byronic passion, whereas in fact life is also important. I actually gave up writing seriously for some time, except for what bubbled up anyway, and when I took it up again I'd got better for the fallow period.

If the problem was wanting to be a writer without wanting to write, you'd never have written the two books you have written, and you'd especially not have written The Wild Swans. Writing deep things like that takes a lot. I wonder if that's part of the problem, along with time, the amount of yourself it will take? And the expectation can be both a help and a weight, when you're thinking it has to be as good. And this one has such deep roots and such strong themes, too.

Have you thought of leaving the Ice Palace book for now and writing something fast and silly?

you are a writer

[kimwinters.livejournal.com]

Peg,

You are a writer and, as much as your inner critic tries to convince you otherwise, don't EVER think otherwise.

You walk through life willing to risk its ups and downs, its highs and lows, and talk about it. I look forward to your journal entries and your willingness to share your pain and progress so openly.

This is the mark of a true writer, the ability to identify those highs or lows and to articulate them as well as you do. In those moments you share with us, I struggle along with you and I celebrate your joys. And, through the magic of your pen, I see much of myself reflected back. In your battle to juggle family, career and writing, I see my own struggle to live life and carve out the uninterrupted writing time I need daily in order to satisfy my muse and feel whole.

I've been in the writer's block mode plenty of times. If the Ice Palace book isn't writing itself yet, give yourself permission to put it aside. Perhaps it's not bearing fruit because it needs hibernation time. Perhaps a round of indulgent reading will inform it in some way. Indulge your muse with literature and books and art, and see what happens.

Even if the Ice Palace book goes on hiatus for a while, be assured you are a writer. Look at what you've created since you launched this live journal. It in itself is a work of art.


Kim

[radiotelescope.livejournal.com]

I have less chops to be lecturing about writing than some people in
this thread. And more than others. So:

If you doubt you are a writer, write a sentence. On the novel, or on
something else. If it's a terrible sentence, it's still writing. Be
pleased with it. You can tear it out later and put in the sentence
that should go there -- that will also be writing.

(I had a project sitting on the shelf from Halloween through January,
essentially untouched. Eventually not working on it got to be too much
of a burden-cum-self-fulfilling prophecy, so I wrote a sentence. (Or a
line of code -- it being a project with both.) That was Feb 4th. I
also wrote some on Feb 5th. Also EVERY DAY since then. It's not like
building up momentum, but it *is* like getting closer to finished,
each day.)

(Oh, and right now I think the whole project is incoherent,
superficial, and will disappoint everyone. I'm *still* working on it
every day. Because I might someday change my mind about whether it
sucks, but that certainly won't happen if I don't work on it.)

And if that's too trite and too easy to say, I will refer to something
Real Live Preacher said on his weblog a couple of weeks ago:

"If you preach in one church for ten years, you eventually learn that
you must always be filling your cup until it overflows. The preaching
comes out of the overflow."

It's probably related.

[kishmish.livejournal.com]

*hug* You are a writer and nothing can un-writer you. Everyone has many different sides, you can be more than one thing. Writer, mother, friend, and great person. Sometimes its hard to be more than one thing at a time, but when inspiration kicks in, you'll feel like your writer side again. Don't give up, Peg, being a writer is part of you and it will never go away. Ever.