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Slave Within
As a student, I often procrastinated until the day or two before an assignment was due, then "pulled an all-nighter" to get it finished. Initially my grades were fairly good, but always with the suggestion that I practice revising my work to improve it. Once, in a fit of freshman arrogance, I returned an A paper to my English professor with the remark "I haven't learned anything from your evaluation." A weekend passed; Mr Evans returned it the following Monday looking like he'd dipped it in red ink. Comments were written in the margins, between the lines, filling the back of each sheet. I found it strangely hard to revise my work: I still do. But I hit upon a way of using my procrastination to produce nearly final copy the first time. The "method" was suggested to me by reading the Autobiography of Bertrand Russell while I was in graduate school at Indiana. In it, Russell describes how he would think intensively and long about a proposed book topic, then dictate the book to his secretary, who would send the manuscripts off to publishers with only a few changes in Russell's hand. I wondered at how Russell could compose his elegant prose in this way, and in particular how he could remember what he intended to say long enough to dictate. Although it was scary, I began trying to apply Russell's approach to my own writing. I found that, if I were not "ready" to write yet, coherent prose would not flow; I would end up with a series of disjointed paragraphs, or even sentences or ideas not connected in any coherent way to a final essay or chapter. But if I thought intensively for a few minutes each day about the writing project, then put it out of my conscious mind, some kind of unconscious process would continue working on the topic. When I would "return" in a day or two, coherent paragraphs were "there" waiting to be written out. I have found confirmation of this unconscious operation of thought in another seemingly unrelated field: crossword puzzle solving. I've become addicted to the New York Times puzzles. I find that an initial working through all the clues across and down produces relatively little in the way of completed squares (except for the Monday puzzle, which always seems easiest); but each subsequent day, when I return to the puzzle I find obvious what was perplexing before. Again, some kind of unconscious working through clues must be happening. My terms for this unconscious phenomenon have included a variety of metaphors: the notion of a shelf to which part of me repairs, viewing dispassionately what the rest of me is experiencing and doing; an adaptation of Freud's Unconscious, ascribing to it a kind of life of its own, reflective, pondering, silent in the daily communications with others. But frankly, I'm embarrassed to confess that I have come to think of it as the Slave Within, an inner ghost writer to whom I give writing tasks, checking in from time to time to see how he (or she) is getting along with them, adding where necessary additional information or references. I have come to trust my Slave Within as reliable, and certainly worthy of my solicitude. Am I nuts? I wonder whether others have a similar "method" of writing. TAA workshops emphasize the importance of daily writing, writing for others' review, writing collectives, creating obligations to show mentors one's work on a regular basis, et cetera, and I agree that those are important techniques. But I find that my daily writing mostly goes on unconsciously or subconsciously, while I am engaged in other activities. My Slave Within writes daily -- perhaps all the time -- and I am always there for him (her) to show what has been written. I remember my procrastination; I wonder whether others have come to terms with it as I did. There's an old joke that goes something like: "I hear there's a conference on Schizophrenia: I'm of half a mind to attend." Is my bicameral self, one a ghostly writer enslaved to the other's writing projects, common or not? You tell me. |
