My writing process tends to be very...big. I schedule huge blocks of time, at least a few hours at a time, sometimes days even, surround myself with stacks and stacks of research, make a pot of coffee, and hunch over the computer until I "need to get the blood moving," then I stalk around the apartment for a while (maybe eat something over the sink) and get back to it. In a six hour block I'll usually get a good five pages written. Call it slow, call it inefficient, call it privileged - but don't call it unproductive. These are habits I formed as an undergraduate who worked during the day and had only the night to write. Writing papers through the night was not uncommon. Yes, these papers tended to be due in the morning.
But these habits followed me to graduate school, which was fine at first, I guess. It's very difficult, granted, when there are several commitments throughout the day demanding your time and taking away writing time. But I managed. Weekends, nights, and the occasional non-teaching day.
Last week, though, my wife asked me to drive her to work everyday this week (she's expecting in a month (our first, yeah!) and has to drive an hour each way, so there's no way I would say no). I did, though, stupidly bring up the problem this poses my writing process. (Idiot).
"But I need my computer and, you know, stuff, so that I can write," I say.
"There's a library there. Can't you bring it with you?"
Of course I can. And I did. But I put on the back burner any hope of getting writing done. New environment and all that.
But you know what? I'm writing more and in shorter bursts of time.
Weird.
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I've been finding that occassionally finding a new 'spot' jumpstarts my writing. I don't know why - normally I'm like you: familiar spot, lots of research, some pacing around the apartment, and diet coke consumption (rather than coffee) leading to eaking out a few pages. But, when I switch locations, I seem to get those short productive bursts, too. I'm not sure why.
I certainly wouldn't call 5 good pages in six hours inefficient. I'm lucky if I get two in that time. But then again, I'm the king of the "Scot Barnett Sentence" (they named it after me an all)...
Dude! Where to begin in response? 1) You are amazingly efficient, even to someone who spent many nights as you did simply cranking out a paper because my second shift job meant I couldn't write it during the day. 2) The demands of dissertating parents (and parents to be) are two-fold: not only do you have the family (spouse, partner, lover, whatever as well as children) and attendant demands (how can you say no to a request such as yours?) BUT you have equal demands from the dissertation. These are no less pressing or demanding than those from your real family members! A dissertator with a family is a person with two masters and BOTH must be appeased. Both need daily attention and this can be difficult, frustrating, even maddening, especially when your advisor wants a revision tomorrow but your family has been feeling your absence and acting out in the space you have so conveniently left for them.
But, Adam, you know what? It's worth it. Keep talking to both your masters. Don't close one down just to appease the other. Make it known that they are equally important. It'll pay off, I promise!
I'm not sure how y'all do it all. Really. Although sometimes I wish I had a support system to go home to. Doing it all on your own isn't easy, either.
What I love about this post --and about describing this process -- is that it brings in so many elements that get ignored when we talk about writing as something to teach and even, often, something we're studying and theorizing. (These things hardly ever get left out when we're talking about what we actually do, though.) Our spaces and places, what we do with our bodies, how our families and loved ones figure in, food and drink, emotion and self-judgment, our life cycles and life spans (I could go on . . .)
Let us all know when that baby comes! best to you, two (three).
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