It is cloudy in Miami, and my stuff arrived yesterday. Instead of a near-empty apartment, I now have an apartment full of boxes. I have emptied only one box of clothes, and most of the kitchen/food boxes, since it was becoming impossible to cook without my stash of spices. The books are still in their boxly abodes.
Writing has been going slow. And with all the things to unpack, a new city to explore and lots of paperwork to do in a brand new job, I am not expecting to get a lot written. Instead, I am focusing on small goals -- writing a little bit everyday. This is one of the things I have learnt in the last few years. When faced with time crunch, bring your goals down to the bare minimum. So, all I hope to achieve during the next week or so, couple of lines everyday. I think, this is realistic and can be done.
And in tune with my limited time for writing, I have been trying to re-fashion some of the older materials I had generated earlier this year in my persona poetry class. So far, I have three poems fashioned out of a long poem I had earlier.
What I have found out is that, more than proving anything to the world outside, to achieve a goal that has been set for me by others (i already have enough of that in my academic life, thank you!), i need to work on my poems to stay sane. And by "sane", I mean this feeling that I am something more than a number in this teaching machine. My poems help me to become the person I want to be -- in whatever little, fragmentary way poems and stories are capable of doing that. I am a much better person when I write for 10-20 mins every day, than when I put in 4 hours during the course of a single day.
If you're struggling with your writing, or with finding time to write, I hope you'll try this out: set small goals for yourself, and celebrate when you have written one good line during the course of a day. And yes, write everyday, even if it's for 15 minutes.
Writing has been going slow. And with all the things to unpack, a new city to explore and lots of paperwork to do in a brand new job, I am not expecting to get a lot written. Instead, I am focusing on small goals -- writing a little bit everyday. This is one of the things I have learnt in the last few years. When faced with time crunch, bring your goals down to the bare minimum. So, all I hope to achieve during the next week or so, couple of lines everyday. I think, this is realistic and can be done.
And in tune with my limited time for writing, I have been trying to re-fashion some of the older materials I had generated earlier this year in my persona poetry class. So far, I have three poems fashioned out of a long poem I had earlier.
What I have found out is that, more than proving anything to the world outside, to achieve a goal that has been set for me by others (i already have enough of that in my academic life, thank you!), i need to work on my poems to stay sane. And by "sane", I mean this feeling that I am something more than a number in this teaching machine. My poems help me to become the person I want to be -- in whatever little, fragmentary way poems and stories are capable of doing that. I am a much better person when I write for 10-20 mins every day, than when I put in 4 hours during the course of a single day.
If you're struggling with your writing, or with finding time to write, I hope you'll try this out: set small goals for yourself, and celebrate when you have written one good line during the course of a day. And yes, write everyday, even if it's for 15 minutes.
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