Writing

I have not been as productive as I could be in terms of writing my memoir, as I am a bit lost about what and where to begin the writing. I have come with some ways to kickstart work on it again. There is writing going on – been writing on this blog as well as on Medium.com.  Also, have been doing a fair bit of reflective writing to learn more about myself. That has been one of the side-effects of writing the memoirs. But not only am I learning about myself, I am also being confronted by things that perhaps I have not dealt with. Either there is a whole other memoir that is peeking out, or I am delving in areas that I did not anticipate. So far, I am just writing all of it down, and then one day, I might come back to it to confront it. I take solace in the words of Hemingway from an interview in the Paris Review.

INTERVIEWER

… what do you think is the function of your art? Why a representation of fact, rather than fact itself?

HEMINGWAY

Why be puzzled by that? From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. But what about all the reasons that no one knows?

Health

It was raining a fair bit recently, which means I am not able to walk to and from Kohub, so I am not getting much exercise. This means that my leg has not got stronger and mobility is still an issue. And as I wrote before, this is not ideal. I have also been struggling with sleep – its been more than a week since I did not toss and turn for hours before waking up still tired. Not being properly rested means that my body cannot recover — so my back is sore. The mattress at the apartment is not helping. Sigh – so much complaining!

I can deal with those things above. I complain but I can deal with them. What worries me is that its affecting my mood, my state of mind. That is never good.

On the positive note, next week I have two visitors coming. Two people whose company I enjoy very much. I am looking forward to that. And maybe all I need is a good nights sleep – things always feel better after a good sleep.

As I was agonising and struggling with voice and conceptual string, I began to read Catherine Deveny’s Use Your Words: A Myth-Busting, No-Fear Approach to Writing. You know the saying, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear, or this case, when the writer is floundering, Deveny will appear.

The key thing that hit me that that this thinking of structure, conceptual strings, and the such was really just a distraction from the writing. Do the writing and let it work out those problems.

It reminded me of a book I read on procrastination which said one of the most common ways to procrastinate was to read books on procrastination. I often think of that that when I embark on any projects. Its very tempting to spend time on setting up all the various files, folders, and such so that I can be efficient with my work. It was something I used to do all the time. Now, I just do and build the system as I work. Not only is this more productive, its also a better system, as its built to the needs of the project rather than becoming an imposition on the project when it is running. Essentially, approach the productivity system with a prototyping mindset, rather than trying to retrofit it because you are suffering from structural fixedness.

Deveny writes about something similar about writers who put off writing until they can go away for a writing retreat so that they will have unbroken time to focus. Weeks go by arranging things in anticipation of the writing – instead of writing. Stephen King in On Writing writes how he wrote his first books in the laundry room of his house while teaching at a high school. I know people who have spent a lot of time and money setting up their creative space even before they have created anything. Deveny says if you have ten minutes, you can write – anywhere, anytime. I like how she thinks.

Another one of my productivity ‘insights’, which is essentially an excuse, is time of day. I have read many books such as Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, where the habits of various writers are examined. Tim Ferriss always asks his podcast guest what their morning habits are. There is a fetishisation of writing in the morning. While true that its best to write then, I have also used it as an excuse to not write as I have missed the ‘golden’ writing time. ‘Oh well – tomorrow I will wake up even earlier.’ Never works.

Deveny also writes about this. She reckons its best to write when one has the time. I found this out a few months ago, when after a futile morning of not writing, I gave up and headed to the local cafe. While waiting for my bacon and eggs, I thought – ‘ten minutes of writing while waiting, why not’. I left almost two hours later after having written more than a 1000 words. I was reminded of this again recently, when after coming to the co-working space at lunchtime and then struggling to write, when my new Czech writing buddy – Matin – said he had written 2000 words. Damn. So I sat and wrote – few hours later, I had 1300+ words done. A lousy day ended up being very productive. And I was writing in the afternoon. Fuck the morning.

So I am taking what Deveny is suggesting to heart and just writing. I will let the writing sort out the structural and conceptual issues. I will trust the writing and the writing process. It will be much easier to edit a large something, than have nothing to edit.

Having worked with the design colleagues to teach first year design theory and history, my visual literacy has improved significantly. Also, having extensive sessions on whiteboards trying to find the best way to visually capture information, processes and ideas and then in turn to represent a simple but effective visuals, has taught me the power of visual communication.

So I present to you my attempts to try to reconcile the three foci into a single conceptual string. The basic idea is that education has to encompass self-identity, an understanding of community, and the responsibility of citizenship when thinking of the development of a student beyond being a worker.

The first is a linear diagram. The idea is that the development has to work in that order; one has to be achieved before the other can be.

But things are rarely that neat. Leap-frogging or overlapping is far more likely. So I thought of another diagram to visualise that.

So, I think I might a conceptual string which is about the development of those three as the higher purpose of education might work for me.

Although, I have been reading Catherine Deveny’s Use Your Words: A Myth-Busting, No-Fear Approach to Writing. And she has very different ideas to the hand wringing.

A conceptual string is the idea or framework that spans the entire work, and upon it are hung all the chapters. I had some ideas before I started the work, but since I started, it seems that they are not strong enough to hold the book together, or perhaps the book spans too wide a chasm for the those ideas.

This is fundamental problem then becomes a problem of structure. How does one write something when there is no unifying theme to hold it together. The cheat or, if I were being generous, the hack is to think of the book as a series of essays. That would mean that they need to have that conceptual string only running through each essay/chapter. However, that is not quite what I want to achieve.

When I started, the book was going to be about how my teachers influenced me how that I am a teacher. Even before I started writing, I realised that it was too limiting a focus, and, to be honest, also quite boring. As I thought further of the role and influence of teachers, I arrived at three foci — the development of the student’s self-identity, an understanding of community, and the responsibility of citizenship.

This is influenced partly by some of the thinking from a couple of projects that I have worked on as well as the teaching that I have done in the last 3-4 years. Those three are areas where education is moving away from to focus on employability as the key measurement of academic success – which is unfortunate and to the detriment of the future. But how do I reconcile the three foci into a conceptual string. That is the challenge.

Any thoughts?

Voice is a real struggle for me when I am writing. I feel like I move from the lyrical trying to write like an Indian writer to the more formal prosaic non-fiction writer. It leaves me confused about what I am doing, and neither is done well.

Having recently read Obama’s first memoir, I was inspired and found myself wanting to write in a voice and style similar to his. To put it simply, he writes by first describing what was happening, and then follows it with an analysis of what he was feeling or thinking then. Then he weaves those pieces through the framework of race and legacy.

I also find myself influenced by the voice of Hitchens and Steinbeck, to write to say what I have to say without flourish. But I my writing has neither the wit of Hitchens nor the craft of Steinbeck. True that those are ambitious footsteps to try to walk in, but one had to aim high to get somewhere useful.

Finding voice has been a struggle for me when I used to write when I was younger. I began writing by aping the styles of those who most influenced me then. Attempts to write like Lawrence, Hardy, Orwell, Welsh, and Kerouac were all just bad facsimiles of them. I did not even attempt Rushdie or Mistry – feeling that their styles were too far from my voice.

I stopped write non-academic work when I was 25 — 15 years ago. When I started my academic voice was as expected – pompous and affected. Over the years, its got better as I have got more confidence in what I have to say. Writing to explain complex ideas to students, especially for those non-native English speakers, has been a good exercise in focused and clear writing. I still have a tendency to over-write, but that is usually motivated to be as explicitly clear as possible.

I do think that I am a better editor than a writer, having helped many friends with their writing. My editing strengths are structure, flow and clear writing. So thats the approach I think I might have to take with this project. Get bunches of text down, and then try to structure them into a narrative.

But there is still the issue of the conceptual string for the entire work that I have not sorted.

(More on that next post)

As I begin my fourth week in Koh Lanta, there is something that I bothering me.

The co-working space is great – its amazingly quiet even when most of the tables are taken. Everyone works on their projects and this makes for a enveloping of a energy that is productive and focused. There is also the peer-pressure of everyone heads down working – one does not want to be the odd one out pointlessly in Facebook or Buzzfeed. Not everyone is a coder programer type either. There is a group of 5 Canadians who are here to edit and finish their documentary, there is a guy who writes advertising scripts, a few photographers and designers. Luckily, there is also a guy writing here. He sets the pace for me. Most days he is in before me and will have 1000 words done.

There was a day when I was struggling to get much done, and when I spoke to him, he had 2000 words done. That pushed me to get in gear, and by the end of the day I had 1300 words when I would have been happy with 130. It was just what I needed.

While the writing is going well, I hit a total of 14000 words yesterday, I have not seen much of Koh Lanta. There is lots to do, and the good people at Kohub organise many events. There are quiz nights, karaoke, birthdays, overnight trips, boat rides, visits to the local school, sunset at the beach drinks, and so on. And I have not joined them for any of those.

One does not realise one’s physical mobility till one has a yardstick of others to measure with. And my mobility varies from day to day. As I wrote earlier, in terms of the long term, I am improving, but the day to day, it varies. Within a day, it varies as well. The weather, the amount of time I have been sitting, have I stretched during the day, all affect my mobility.

And then there is the state of mind. I have to be honest. I am not always sure how much of this is in my head and how much is real. I know that the problem with my leg is real but I am not sure of the degree – how much of that is behaviour entrenched over the last 9-10 months, and how much is an actual limitation. Or am I just overthinking the whole thing in either direction.

And this bothers me especially since I feel that I am missing out on the experience of being here. There is so much more I could be doing and experiencing.

Garry says that I should ”just whack only, not doing is worse” – which I do think is great advice. If only I could get my mind to believe that.

As I am writing my memoir, I have made an effort to read more of the same genre over the last few months. I have just finished Barack Obama’s first memoir, and have began reading James Baldwin’s.

But something struck me as I was looking at the Kindle store’s top 100 memoirs — that I tend to skip memoirs by women, not even looking at the synopsis. Then someone suggested that I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, which I mentally dismissed – after all, why I would read ‘Eat, Pray, Love.

Also, of the total of 30 books from my top 10 lists (fiction, non-fiction, and introspective), only two are written by women (and this has been pointed out to me before).

Furthermore, since 2015, I have been tracking the books I have read, and the numbers of a year and 9 months of reading are no better there.

The why of this is something that requires more thought, but frankly, its heading to excuses country. As a solutions oriented person, I am going to try to alternate the books I read to address this pattern. I have put a pause on Baldwin, and am reading Maya Angelou’s
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings.

I am also going to read ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ – anyone have a copy?

Writing

The writing has been going well most days, and I have managed to get to 800 easily daily bar yesterday and today. I discovered that in Scrivener, you can set not just a daily target, but a target for the entire document as well as a deadline. Then it will calculate how many words are needed per day to achieve target by deadline. And its dynamic – meaning the daily target changes depending on one’s productivity from the day before. My daily target is now 910 words.

The last two days have been harder to get volume. So far, I have been concentrating on getting all the words down and not thinking too much about much else. I have been worried about the need to structure, but spoke to Brian M and we both agreed that it was more important to get the words down. The structure will come eventually

And it did. At least I think so. There seems to be a suggestion of chapters based on certain themes that have come up. I decided to pull one of those themes out and write to that. The theme was name (part of which I posted yesterday).

Writing to that focus had slowed me down. What I had written till then was mostly descriptive – chunks of writing about specific incidents that had happened. To write a chapter, I need a thematic string that I can hang the chunks on. And importantly, to move beyond mere description and answer the ‘so what’ question.

For me, that is the key to good writing – the payoff for the reader. A bad writer thinks what they are saying is interesting, and important, while a good writer wants to reward the reader’s time and effort with an insight or appreciation that the reader thinks is important. And that is why the ‘so what’ question is so important.

‘I have read it, and now so what?’ – the reader asks. That is the question that must be answered.

Health

At times, it feels like two steps forward and one step back. If considered from when I got here 3 weeks ago, I am better. But it does not progress in a straight line, Thursday was a bad day. I sat almost continuously for 5 hours, and when I got up, my right leg was stiff. It meant that mobility was hampered again. It was not only affected me physically, but I tend to take it unnecessarily hard emotionally. On Friday, I made a point to spend a significant amount of time working standing up. When I stand, I tend to fidget and move around. It keeps my leg moving. I also have Timeout installed so that every 25 mins, I am reminded to have a walk around and do some stretching.

I have to keep reminding myself – it took me a while to get this immobile so it will take me a while to get mobile again.

Patience.

I arrived at Koh Lanta 10 days ago so I figure its time to give everyone an update.

My flight landed in Krabi, and everything was pretty smooth sailing. My airport transfer was actually there — unlike in Cochi. The drive to Koh Lanta from Krabi airport used to require two car ferry rides but one of those has been replaced by a bridge — the other will be replaced by a bridge in 2023.

I got dropped off at the Kohub apartments and my room is on the second floor. The room is quite large with two single beds. I also have a balcony and a decent window. I spent the day having a nap as I had slept poorly the night before given my anxieties about my flight to Krabi. I wasn’t up for much for the rest of the day so other than a short walk to get some food and water, I stayed in my room.

For the next few days, rather than try to jump straight into the book writing, I decided to give myself a few days to acclimatise to the environment. And I definitely needed that. Getting my bearings as well as dealing with the heat took a fair bit out of me — mentally and physically. The difference between the heat of a Melbourne summer and Koh Lanta is the humidity. I understand why people in hot and humid areas are so chill and slow— its too exhausting to behave otherwise. When Lee Kuan Yew chose the air-conditioner as the invention of the previous millennium, it was because he felt that it served as an equaliser that allowed us in the tropics enough comfort to be as productive as the Europeans. What Mahathir had to say about the tropical people perhaps is best left for another day.

For the rest of the week, I sorted my emails and other administrative tasks — of which there were more than I thought I would have. Life has a lot of little mundane administrivia.

I had still not started writing in a focused manner. When I sat down to write, I either did not know where to start, or what to start with. It sounds strange, but I thought I had at least enough of a plan to kickstart my writing. There was too much noise in my head, so I did what I recommend others when there is too much noise.

Have a mind dump and then make lists. And that was what I did. And damn did I have a lot of noise in my head. And not just about the writing. There were so many things I wanted to get done during the break, that I had to honestly ask myself – what do I HAVE to get done? One of my usual failure points is to try to have too many projects. If I have 5, I might get two-three done barely to satisfaction, while the others languish in my to-do lists.

It made me think of something I tell my students. Most of education is deficit focused. You might do really well in physics and math, but badly in chemistry and biology, so the solution is to work harder on your weakness. But maybe we need to think of it in a different way by leaning into our strengths, and making sure we are the best at those.

To that end, I decided that for the next two weeks I will focus only on one task – the writing for the book. I have my other projects captured in my mind dump and my to-do lists. Also, I have created a tickle file to capture other ideas and potential explorations while I focus on one thing.

I started writing on Monday with a target to write 800 unedited words a day, and I have exceeded that target everyday. That is making me think that maybe I should have a stretch target to push myself to write more. Any thoughts?

(This post continues from here)

The fear of the flight was the manifestation of the mental impact of my injury.

Cochi was not something I feared as I knew that where I was going to a fixed place and there was not much involved in terms of needing to be mobile. Singapore was easy because I know Singapore and have friends I could call upon. Singapore is an easy place to move around with cheap and reliable taxis.

Koh Lanta is a different beast. I had never been here before and the whole scenario was an huge unknown. Yes I had seen pictures of the accommodation and the co-working space but beyond that it was a huge emptiness which my imagination was filling in. So I went to google street-view to at least have a sense of what my environment would be like, what the walk to the co-working space looked like, where the closest shops and restaurants were. I tried to fill in any gaps and gave up on embracing chaos — its not what I need now. I got a walking-hiking pole, compression socks, and a host of things to help with the anxieties and stresses.

And it was all very helpful — but I was still focused on the physical impact of the injury. I knew in the back of my head that there was more but did not want to deal with it. So I ignored it.

I ignored it and it grew into a fear — which manifested in the fear of the flight to Krabi. The fear began to subside as I went through the check-in process and by the time I arrived at my accommodation, the fear had mellowed.

Understand that the fear is not gone, but the fear of the flight which was a manifestation of my anxieties and stresses of my physical mobility, is still lurking underneath. And I have to deal with that, but I learned something important.

I learnt that fear is not extrinsic – its a fear of the extrinsic – and the fear comes from the intrinsic. I learnt that within us sits the birth place of our fears. In order to deal with one’s fear, one first needs to understand that so that one can find that birthplace and begin to manage that fear.