Nicole Breit's advice

Lots and lots of snow. There's a particular kind of silence in a snowy Toronto - you can hardly hear the cars, the sirens, everything is muffled. Even at night, with the lights off, the house is illuminated through the windows by all that silver white. Very pretty. For now.

Gifts. Yesterday I wrote to Nicole Breit, whom I met at the Canadian Creative Non-fiction Conference at Banff this spring. She took my workshop on public speaking for writers and did a great job, and then I learned that she'd won our writing prize for this year. She has since won several other prizes - a fantastic writer, focussed, powerful, haunting.

I wrote to her yesterday after reading her interview for "Room" magazine that I posted on my writing Facebook page, Borntoblogbybethkaplan. It was inspiring, and I wanted to read the essay that won the prize. She wrote back and sent me the essay, which I can't wait to read. We also discussed writing blocks - I confessed I'm still struggling to get back to work on the memoir. She gave me a great suggestion: write down what is blocking you.

So I did. For those of you interested in the writing process of a scattered writer, here it is:

2016-12-17

Why I’m stuck

1.    Because Act One needs more intimate family material, which means figuring out what it should be, which means going back to diaries and letters to dredge up what should be included. The necessity for research paralyses me always. I look at the stack of material, don't know where to start, give up, find something else to do.

What to do about it:

Give yourself a set time to go through the material – a week or two. Keep moving through the pages  – and then pick something and go with it.

2.    Because this latest round of edits makes me feel like a lousy writer. I know it doesn’t help, I always nag my students who say generic self-deprecating things like that, but when I feel this negative, it also paralyses me. I feel – as usual – that I’m shallow and hasty, rushing through, not giving the story and the writing the depth of thought it requires. So what’s the point of doing more?

Putting yourself and your work down doesn’t help anyone, certainly not you. You are who you are as a person and a writer. You have not accomplished great things but you’ve accomplished a hell of a lot more than many. Stop dwelling on defeat and get on with the work. It’s the only way forward. You’ve done so much work on this book already; people who’ve read it say they’ve enjoyed it, and that’s just an early draft. There’s great potential there. Listen to that voice, not the other.

3.    Because the work still to be done requires the unpacking of family unhappiness. That’s what’s needed to give the book context – the dysfunction that created the young woman who’s narrating, i.e. me. It’s a positive story in the end, redemptive, but it needs to start in a dark place, and I’m resisting going there.

Do your job. It’s your job to go there, because your readers can’t and don’t. What to do with what you’ve been given: write about it.

4.    Because Facebook, email, reading, Christmas, the house, the Y, reading, the family, even this blog and now Netflix and, always, reading - all these feel more important, immediate, satisfying, compelling.

Do your job. First thing after breakfast as many mornings in the week as you can. Use the pomidoro method if you need to – set the timer for 25 minutes to start. This is your key writing time, between teaching terms. Go.

Okay, let's see if that works. And if that doesn't, this might: