Mondayitis...or mania?

Am I the only person who looks on the beginning of a new week with dread? Yet, again after a seemingly stable week and quiet weekend attending to domestic duties and my own headspace (reading papers, watching my beloved Magpies play AFL football, one chick flick movie in the evening when alone in the house), I do not want to rise from bed and greet the new day.

Today I have begun with a leisurely lie-in which I justified by reading a hard back on Wikinomics. Yep, it is interesting in a dry academic way but it was not really a priority task. Next procrastination was my own and my son's washing (yep, he could do it himself after TAFE) but why waste all these sunny daylight hours? Then on to that wonderfully riveting household duty bathroom cleaning. Yep, even that appears better than sitting at the keyboard embarking on my final write up of my PhD.

Oh, look lunchtime. Now I MUST prepare yoghurt, hummus and vegetarian lasagne for dinner.

Next the email sort through and on to this blog.

Funny how the hours are rapidly dwindling and I have achieved NOTHING of substance.

If I stop and reflect, and am honest with myself I really do know why I feel this way each Monday.

By the end of June the Exegesis must be completed so that means only three more weeks to go. I have the material I need. I have all the reading completed, to read more is just going to make it all less 'controllale". I have written the Preface structural summary and main points. I have drafted the Chapter structural layout with thesis argument and hypothesis development through to outcomes.

So why won't I write it?

I have been trying very hard to distance myself from my candidature and look towards life after the PhD, knwoing it is common for people to face a void. For me I fear that void. My self-perception for so many years now has been that I am a PhD candidate and trainee academic.

When the Exegesis is done and dusted the Artefact remains, and I have never been comfortable identifying as a writer. I am not. I am simply a writing craftsperson on a journey of discovery, playing with the 'real writing', a novel.

And I am scared.

I am scared I cannot do it, no matterhow much research and analysis I have done into the process and practice of professional authors.

The big question remains do I have that ability to commune with the Muse? To reach out and grasp that very essence of creation?

Also to do this, mobilise my creative desires and abilities, how safe am I going to be?

Now I have worked my way down to the crux of the matter.

Do I really want to embark on that marvellous, addictive manic phase I need to be generative and productive?

Having spent so many weeks trying to consolidate my wellness routines, and stabilise my moods, am I ready to (or willing to) put it all 'on the line' just to achieve at my highest level of creativity?

It's what I have grieved for that beautific state for over twenty-one years.
I have been atempting to control it via medication ever since I accepted the need to be medicated for life. It had to be fought for my role as mother, but what about now?

Surely, as an author, I must go there.
I cannot see how to do it without mania. Is it any wonder, I put it off.

I just wish my supervisor could realise how much I am thinking of sacrificing for this last foray into my artistic self.

I am scared.

Come, hold my hand Calliope.

Blog or Writers journal?

A very interesting discussion is occurring on the Australian Association of Writing Program's postgraduate website the Writingnetwork.edu.au.

As part of many PhDs in Creative Writing the scholars must keep a writer's journal which is reflective of the process of scholarship and creative production of the Artefact. From this personal journey material emerges a record of research practice which is interrelated to the actual creative writing component. Each is expected to feed off each other thus generating an intellectual conversation between art and craft.

On the website the current Editor of the Month, a friend and co-scholar, Di, has posed the question; what is the difference between a journal and a blog?

I thought that addressing this question belonged in my Blog. I am using this blog as my writer's reflective journal.

Why?

Because an electronically archived series of entries and prinatble documents are able to be searched by tagged keywords and themes.

This allows me to also search in my bibliographic software program, Endnote for similar keywords and themes that I have listed in my fields. I am expecting that I will be able to draw together my own thoughts on the writing process with those of academics and professional writers on each key theme as it emerges.

I foresee that my exegesis will contain many styles of written text and voice, the academic voice; formal and refined, the colloquial (mine and authors from podcasts and audio files or interview transcripts), and my informal reflections from my blogs.

There is however, one very BIG difference between a blog and a journal.

The writer's journal is for all intents and purposes a private series of written entries. It is conceived of as a private space. Only certain things will be shared with the examiners, supervisors and fellow academic scholars. Thus anything can be written about without fear of self-disclosure.

The blog on the other hand is for the public domain. The author consciously decides what is posted to the blogosphere. The reason for this restraint and self-censorship was very well described by Mia Freeman in her weekend column of the Age weekend glossy magazine last weekend.

She speaks of how as an employer she was able to eliminate three candidates from her shortlist of potential employees just by checking their FB and Twitter accounts. In the same way we are judged by our appearance, voice, clothes etc, we are also judged by our cyberspace persona.
She describes de-selecting these job applicants because one thought her best public persona was that of a binge drinker getting 'wasted' each weekend. Another was very indiscreet and bitchy about her current employer... not a good sign for a prospective employer to read.

Why on earth did these women think their cyberspace persona (with or without avatar) is disconnected from their real selves?

In my blog I am always aware of moral and ethical perspectives on what I write. How will/does my entries impact on those who have experienced what I am blogging about? How do the people I blog about feel about 'their story' and their 'selves' being placed on display for public consumption? Am I being respectful and not mining their emotions for material?

Of course how I perceive someone or something is not the definitive truth, it is my 'take' on things on this given day at this particular moment at the keyboard. The guiding rule is how does this text show me in the public domain?

Okay, so why have I chosen a public domain for my writer's journal? Many reasons.

• I want it electronic.
• I want it tagged and searchable.
• I want it public.
• I want readers to gain an insight into Bipolarity.
• Bipolarity and madness is the theme of my novel and a key theme in the exegesis.
• Madness and creativity is another key theme in my exegesis.
• Gender and stereotyping is a further key theme in my exehesis.
• These key themes are being explored for academic and public consumption.
• I aim to raise awareness of Creative Writing doctorates and practice.
• My exegesis is conceived as publishable in academic texts and public forums thus my blog needs to be public for readers to find their own way into my story as writer and woman.

Okay Di, is that enough to explain how I view the journal and the blog?

Don't even ask me how I integrate my 'inspiration wall', my post-it notes, clippings, photos and general source material for my writing. Perhaps this is my archive?

In the email today

... yep, inspiration and advise seems to find me when I need it most. Now this has to have come via The Graces!

What work-life balance? (It's all one pond.)

Wednesday 12th May 2010

I went on a retreat a few weeks ago, and it was just the thing for recalibrating my energy, focus and enthusiasm. What is was not about was work-life balance, because I don't think that's the right paradigm for my life, and maybe not for yours, either.

For me, it's about choosing in a more flexible way, day to day, how to allocate time between the different parts of my life - client work, writing my book, working on my business, family, friends, downtime (and currently of course, Masterchef!). I used to think of it as making work-life choices, but now I've taken it a step further.

While I was on retreat, I had a chat to Venerable You, a Buddhist nun I met last year when I presented a couple of workshops at the Australian Youth Buddhist Conference at Portsea. Venerable You is a most practical and also inspired teacher, a combo that appeals greatly to me. (She is also very amusing...)

We were talking about fitting meditation and reflection into a busy life, and she mentioned that she saw it all as 'just one pond'. A lightbulb moment. Just one pond. Not divvying up time between this compartment or that, finishing 'work' so you can move onto 'life'. Just one pond. For me, a window opened somewhere, bringing a sense of flexibility I hadn't had for a while.

In any moment, on any day, you can move fluidly from one area into another, and back again. You can respond as needed in any part of life. You can follow your sense of what needs to happen next, or what suits your frame of mind. So some days it's all about my book, and on others the focus is on client needs, or cooking a new risotto, or preparing for a creative thinking workshop, or going to a movie with my son or a friend. But there's no weighing it all up to find that perfect (mythical?) balance; whatever needs to happen on a given day, happens.

And if you are cultivating mindfulness, say, or patience, then you cultivate it in every part of your 'work' and your 'life', not just carve out 20 minutes for it each morning.

Just one pond. Utopian maybe, but so far, it works for me.

http://workincolour.com.au/blog/post/65/what-worklife-balance-its-all-one-pond/

A need to stop procrastination...

It's a new day; and I have managed a morning reading the newspaper and listening to talk radio and the pc is now up and running. AND OFF FACEBOOK! I have also delayed doing the bloody email sorting.

I have had one of those breakthrough thoughs in the shower about my PhD progress or lack thereof. Every Monday night I have been watching the new Arts Channel on Foxtel which is allocated to books, literature and writing. Cumulatively, I realise that all the interviews listened to over the past Monday evenings have been percolating somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain. I have been reflecting on the whole creative process and how I go about learning and practicing the craft of novel writing.

And once again like a typical Libran, my thoughts and opinions (scales) counterbalance depending on who is speaking and how well they articulate their processes.

Looking back over the past many months of the PhD I realise I have vasillated between all approches spoken about:

Plot linear notes and plot chronology
Character bios and chronologies
Thematic foci
Scenic reconstructions
Dialogue driven story telling
Structural analysis of plot and story arcs
Character voice and narrative voice

So whilst attending to my personal ablutions I see that over the past three years I have actually done a lot of work! Not nothing as I had recently been feeling!

It's just not cohesive and completely pulled together in a one-piece typed document or manuscript.

I have sequences of false starts and grinding halts all documented and piled heaven-wards on my desk:

electronic file format (and retrievable)word documents,
old library-style system cards,
multi-coloured (and thematically determined(post-it notes,
pictutre images and visual motifs,
hand-written mind maps,
typed MS word flow charts (and other such project-management tools)...

Months and months of intellectual and creative processes on display, right at my fingertips. Ah, the very bones of the Exegesis I believe.

I have had a crack at every method articulated by the published authors from programs like Writers on Writing, The Book Show, and the various Writers' Festivals.

I have been actually working. I have been researching my own creative practice.

Derr, how dumb to see this all as time wasting?

The lows are obviously going to be a generative process also. I just needed to re-frame my own view of it all.

So what if there is only 150 or so pages of typed-novel-manuscript with huge gaps? I have on-hand my cards, memos, notes and dot points, ideas mapped, plots graphed all ready to fill those holes. The book is writing itself although not forthcoming whilst I am waging war on the theory piece editing.

This is the hard part, the sense of nothing being 'finished' as two coponents of the PhD seem at war with each other, like small children fighting for their mother's attention. The stress and feeling of being overwhelmed is immense and should not be underestimated. The impact of this tension cannot simply be ignored or seen as irrelevant. It isn't. It is the PhD process itself. How could I have been so blind?

See 'light bulb' moment of illumination (from earlier mentioned shower stall).

It is envy which has primarily influenced my emotional reactions in the past 24 hours. One author/biographer stated in his interview that he had spent 6 months simply rearranging his system cards until satisfied with the linearity, drama and logic of his text. He then began to write the story.

Envious of this time?
How strange?
That is exactly what I have had...
...time to re-arrange all my creative attempts and thoughts.

What he didn't have was the looming sense of an impending 'Sword of Damocles' that a PhD timeline imposes (over and above) . A knowledge production process which constantly re-iterates via progress reviews and publications a perceived lack of both.

The PhD is a pressure cooker environment. In one sense, it comes down to straight research organisational issues, as in traditional mode PhDs.

Where it differs however is the actual creative artefact production and process that makes it distinctive and unique.

By third year the analogy needs to shift from the realm of the Academy and literary.
It is now one of practice alone.
That the craft has been explored.
Experimentation has occured.
The ingredients laid out ready for the recipe.

Now, in the latter months of the PhD candidature it is like the "Master Chef Pressure Test" (UK version please) .... do it now.

Call it all up,
master your techniques,
hone the craft,
present in the time frame.

"Step back from your benches".

Just before the clock ticks over, stand back and take 'stock' (pardon the pun). What pieces of the dish are already sitting in place?

How about a 900 plus article file covering theoretical, methodologicald and practice discussions and arguments? How about pages of self-reflection in the writers' journal? And ALL the above artefact components?

Is not the success of the PhD down now to documenting the research findings and calling a halt to the research gathering?

So I am actually facing my ususal learned behgaviour pattern - facing down my personal demon; the 'fear of success'? I have all I need just not the motivation/inclination to lay myself on the line - or to 'walk the talk' (in common parlance).

Just take one baby step each day, Carol. Stop looking at the whole picture... it is paralysing.

The failure is not in the moving forward and writing poor quality work it is not writing at all.

Today is the start of the rest of my lfe (again)

Yep a new day with a late start. I decided a lesiurely morning reading the papers in bed was the perfect way to begin and become motivated to actually rise for the day. It was a good call. After yesterday I remain emotionally drained. And for once my first section of the Wednesday paper to open WASN'T the Higher Education Supplement. It is as if I am still feeling alienated and detached from this career or pursuit. I feel totally justified in feeling bereft of a life goal after having discussed with a fellow PhD journeyer that yet another PhDer was bragging about her ability to complete the PhD in under a year. Yet another one accepted into the PhD course at my institution with a completed novel under her belt before begining the course. Less than a month ago it was a male PhDer claiming much the same thing. He would be completing in "a few weeks" after all the exegesis is only 20 - 30,000 words! Where do these two people get off? How can the University supervisors deem this is an acceptable length of scholarship towards a three year full-time doctoral degree by research? I would not argue the veracity of this doctorate being awarded if it was a Professional Doctorate recognising expertise and excellence within the profession... but hold on, neither of these PhD candidates are a Gary Crew, Liz Byrski, Nikki Gemmel etc. Neither of them are actually mainstream published authors! How it devalues the work and academic reading their fellow PhDers have done over the years. Where is the demonstrable synthesis of grappling with the practice/theory dichotomy, the justification for and search to locate epistemological founding for the exgesis, grappling with research methods, looking at literary and genre theories or even demonstration of currently reading widely within field WHILST writing and the impact this has on the Artefact? The bloody thing is completed before the academic quest for knowledge has even begun. And whilst I would be the last to state that there is no research behind a creative output, I would have assumed that a Creative Writing doctorate requires a process of indepth analysis of both practice and methodology. With this in mind how can I feel vindicated to complete my own PhD at an Institution that seems to be tacitly allow this type of 'get the HE students through irrespective of input' to degree program as measure of academic 'output'. Am I still that naive?

Perhaps this explains my detachment from my course and choice of career endeavour. Whilst practitioners within the Creative Industries treat the practice with such disrespect how can we expect to be taken seriously be other professions within and external to the University?

After such negative thoughts and angst (which I pray one day) will become part of the fabric for my own Exegeis)thank goodness I began the daily reading with the body of the Australian newspaper, a very seldom read for me of a Wednesday! Yet today, I was drawn in by the front page feature article on the debate surrounding the Wynne prize. With radio in background and an illuminating discussion between ABC radio's Virginia Triolli (who has actually seen the winning canvas) and an Art Gellery of NSW trustee, the discussion seemed suddenly so pertinent. Virginia's angle was that wgilst copying a master can demonstrate technique it is only when referencing the old work in a postmodern econstructed manner does it become an original composition in totality. It is this re-interpretation of what has come before that makes art a 'great piece of art', it brings something new for the viewer. Quite an interesting juxtaposition of concepts given my earlier raging paragraphs huh?

Then on to more Arts news; and featured right there was an academic I have the highest regard for, Nigel Krauth. Nigel was speaking of one of his doctoral students, Glenda Guest who at age 60 has won the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, Siddon Rock. Congratulations to both Glenda (and "mentor" Nigel). Is the fact that Nigel and his colleagues are encourgaing older beginner novelists into and through the PhD a consolation for me, a reason to keep pushing ahead... not for prizes but to prove to myself (again)that I can complete the Course and that sometimes it is a true reflection of scholarship and craft rather than simply 'numbers and game playing' with little regard for academic process. Well done Gold Coast Campus of Griffth. I take my hat off to you all.

And a personal note to Glenda, glad to hear the second book is on the way. Will watch that all important marketing and advertising by Random House. The Australian p.3 is a hell of a good start.