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labingiI had a great time at the Author Alchemy Summit in Portland, OR this weekend, though I had to miss part due to teaching. Many thanks to Jessie Kwak and her husband, Robert, for all their work bringing this together. I think it helped clarify some big life questions for me.
A couple of the sessions involved using the Enneagram to figure out one's strengths as a writer and figuring out one's brand. One common lesson was to be true to yourself in pursuing your authorial career, to figure out what you want your writing to do.
What do I want my writing to do?
This sounds simple, but it has been a hard question for me for a long time. Moreover, it's a subset of my whole career problem: what do I want to do? Not just one thing. In writing, I care about psychological realism, utopia, ecology/ecocentrism, strong character relationships, cultural exploration/getting outside our daily norms, and lots and lots of guilt.
In my life work, I care about teaching, degrowth/just and sustainable economy, saving my hometown from climate disaster as much as possible, reasoned inquiry, my sci-fi writing, nature, Buddhism. The core reason I've gotten next-to-nowhere in both my writing career and my teaching career is that I've always been split in ten different directions. (This isn't even touching on time and energy for family and friends.)
But sitting in that session, I think I cracked it--how all these things are connected. I care about bringing different perspectives together to seek goodness. In fiction, this is dialogism (my dear love as both writer and reader) with a utopian/hopeful bent. In life, it is teaching and reasoned inquiry and Buddhist compassion and care for nature and just/sustainable economy. And I think this clarifies some things about my path forward.
1. I think I need to move toward paid work that facilitates conversations between differing perspectives to (re)build trusting, deliberative communication. Deradicalization work. Teaching English does this a little (better than most of our society), but more and more (in composition classes), it's only indirect. Right now, I'm giving too much time and energy to teaching for too little back, both in satisfaction and pay. I don't know what form this will take. Not formal mediation. I'll probably have to create a place, but it's work that's needed, obviously, and it's work I have talent for and experience in (via teaching).
2. In my fiction, I think this pulls together the project. I'm toying with tagging my work, "Science fiction that explores messy human hearts." That may not trip off the tongue, but I think it sums it up.
3. It even pulls my non-fiction cutoff book together with my fiction (something I'd despaired of): both are about expressing complex, dialogic human truths--with lots of guilt.
4. It fits with my work in the International Degrowth Network's Communications Circle.
5. It even relates to the search tool for fiction I'm starting to work on again, which is all about empowering different niches, different perspectives. You if have a sec, take our survey on your literary tastes.
It pulls together some other threads, too, I won't bore anyone with. This is all just a start, but I think it's something I can work with to start to build a coherent path that will connect the threads of my work.
Short term, I'll probably still be teaching--and long term, hopefully teaching a few classes I really love, but not comp. And not literature, unless it's community ed and just for fun, with people who find it fun. That's my download for now. My deep gratitude goes out to the summit and its speakers for catalyzing this train of thought.
(To clarify, my dissatisfaction with teaching does not have to do with my students or my colleagues; it's with the capitalist, industrial education system, which I'm just running out of steam for (gas? so to speak).)
A couple of the sessions involved using the Enneagram to figure out one's strengths as a writer and figuring out one's brand. One common lesson was to be true to yourself in pursuing your authorial career, to figure out what you want your writing to do.
What do I want my writing to do?
This sounds simple, but it has been a hard question for me for a long time. Moreover, it's a subset of my whole career problem: what do I want to do? Not just one thing. In writing, I care about psychological realism, utopia, ecology/ecocentrism, strong character relationships, cultural exploration/getting outside our daily norms, and lots and lots of guilt.
In my life work, I care about teaching, degrowth/just and sustainable economy, saving my hometown from climate disaster as much as possible, reasoned inquiry, my sci-fi writing, nature, Buddhism. The core reason I've gotten next-to-nowhere in both my writing career and my teaching career is that I've always been split in ten different directions. (This isn't even touching on time and energy for family and friends.)
But sitting in that session, I think I cracked it--how all these things are connected. I care about bringing different perspectives together to seek goodness. In fiction, this is dialogism (my dear love as both writer and reader) with a utopian/hopeful bent. In life, it is teaching and reasoned inquiry and Buddhist compassion and care for nature and just/sustainable economy. And I think this clarifies some things about my path forward.
1. I think I need to move toward paid work that facilitates conversations between differing perspectives to (re)build trusting, deliberative communication. Deradicalization work. Teaching English does this a little (better than most of our society), but more and more (in composition classes), it's only indirect. Right now, I'm giving too much time and energy to teaching for too little back, both in satisfaction and pay. I don't know what form this will take. Not formal mediation. I'll probably have to create a place, but it's work that's needed, obviously, and it's work I have talent for and experience in (via teaching).
2. In my fiction, I think this pulls together the project. I'm toying with tagging my work, "Science fiction that explores messy human hearts." That may not trip off the tongue, but I think it sums it up.
3. It even pulls my non-fiction cutoff book together with my fiction (something I'd despaired of): both are about expressing complex, dialogic human truths--with lots of guilt.
4. It fits with my work in the International Degrowth Network's Communications Circle.
5. It even relates to the search tool for fiction I'm starting to work on again, which is all about empowering different niches, different perspectives. You if have a sec, take our survey on your literary tastes.
It pulls together some other threads, too, I won't bore anyone with. This is all just a start, but I think it's something I can work with to start to build a coherent path that will connect the threads of my work.
Short term, I'll probably still be teaching--and long term, hopefully teaching a few classes I really love, but not comp. And not literature, unless it's community ed and just for fun, with people who find it fun. That's my download for now. My deep gratitude goes out to the summit and its speakers for catalyzing this train of thought.
(To clarify, my dissatisfaction with teaching does not have to do with my students or my colleagues; it's with the capitalist, industrial education system, which I'm just running out of steam for (gas? so to speak).)
