Intimacy + Vulnerability = Productivity

I'd like to start by using a quote from class, from none other than Doug himself:

If you're gonna be a fuck-up, own it.

I get that there was some context to this quote, some situation in which we were referring to ourselves mid-project, but I like thinking about it without context. How do we define "fuck-up"? To what extent can we adopt and maintain this rebellious attitude before it becomes harmful? Who does it harm? Maybe the owning it comes in working with it instead of against it, embracing our quirks and using them as part of who we are as writers. Or maybe it means owning up to our mistakes, recognizing that if something goes awry it falls on our shoulders, and we gotta deal with it. Either way, I think it means that there is productivity in using who we are and what we have as writers, and that leads into my blog for today.

It's interesting that for this post, I'm thinking about my productivity in terms of my independent creative work instead of my scholarly or professional writing. I figured that all of the terms we mentioned about being productive would make me think about my homework habits or past projects... But all I can think about is my personal writing and the way maintaining routine and promising reward developed my comfort and appreciation toward vulnerability.

I joined a writing group with two friends last year, and we met every week to share our writing. Not only our finished, polished pieces, but our most intimate sketchbooks and journals. Our rawest and realest writing, put down into words and gobbled up. At least, that's what I did with the work I got to read... Full disclosure: I'm a ravenous devourer of others' writing. I'm dying to read what people are scribbling about in the corners of their notebooks.

Anyways, that consistency of weekly face-to-face meetings kept me producing constant content to have enough to discuss and share. Not only that, the quality of my content in terms of length and development of ideas, even in my free writing, truly improved.

The keys to our sessions being so successful were trust and organic growth. Trust in that we had to be willing to open ourselves up to each other, willing to share all of our writing, uncensored and open for discussion. We had to allow ourselves to just be ourselves, something that's a lot scarier than we realize when we are constantly striving to present our most polished versions to the world through our writing. Organic growth in that we started with no strict expectations of the group and let it go from there. We barely had a scheduled meeting time, let alone a word count requirement or a stage in the writing process we needed to be at. We came as is. We came with what we had, and what time we didn't spend writing, we spent in conversation (which is totally a part of the writing process!).

It shifted and flexed over time, growing into what we needed it to be-- our own extremely intimate space. I felt rewarded by the thrill I felt when one of them would stop over one of my sentences and hum with approval. I wanted every sentence to feel like that for them. I experimented with poetry, with song lyrics, with doodles. I wanted to capture their sense of delight in my words, wanted to save and savor that feeling. Perhaps that's where the productivity truly came from, then-- my direct and immediate contact with my audience in hopes of connecting with them through unique words.

Hmm... Amanda Palmer, anyone?

Vulnerability: something we won't stop talking about in this class, for good reason. I'm learning more and more (especially nearing the end of this blog post) that that beauty comes in the direct relationship between us and our audience, and the productivity comes from trying to find the work that will not only make us feel the most proud, but will connect with that direct audience. That's really, really hard to do, especially in personal and intimate writing, but speaking as someone who used to groan and cover my notebooks with both hands (who now craves sharing my work, mostly so I get to read everyone else's), I think that's where it needs to start-- shaping our free writing will inevitably shape our professional writing, and I'm excited to see where that direction will take me.