Writing as Transformation
I know how I want writing certain projects to change me. I haven’t known how I want this specific book to change me. Maybe I need to let my other work change me first, maybe not. I think I found a way forward today, after a few good conversations. The insight involved allowing myself to be the person who is writing the work, more, rather than thinking of the work as already separate from myself, and already taking on a life separate from my own.
The breakthrough came from thinking about two aspects of my work, that I held separate from myself and merging them together. It can be hard to escape from yourself, when you take the parts of yourself that you’d put outside of yourself and smash them into each other.
I think I believed, falsely, that if I get all these things that interest me out of my mind, I can become someone else. Sort of like purging something.
I did not expect that during and after the purging, whatever I was purging, stays. I have never poured myself into a work of writing, and then failed to recognize myself in it, very deeply. I have never felt myself becoming “apart” from the writing or paintings I have produced.
I don’t have my own sense of meta-romance, about who I become on the other side of this. I have ideas of lives being touched, but not much ideas about myself being the person touching these lives. Pouring your sweat and blood into something doesn’t make much sense if there is no “you” that you conceive of doing it.
I suppose there is something about the “purity of the ideas” that people with histories in mathematics or music sometimes have.
But even the “pure ideas” need to be written down by “someone.”
And that someone is the me doing it, and so I have to figure out how to do it.
And then there are hardships and complaints.
I imagine a child at the table, “it’s taking me so long to eat my food,” “that’s because I’m not eating it.”
And so I think about myself “not doing the thing” and then being confused about why it is taking so long. The answer is that the transformation and writing process is indeed happening, but if you are not hoping for a sudden transformation, and want a slower transformation, then a slower transformation is probably what I will get. There is some element of design here.
A question can be, how much attentional space is a project taking up, compared to other things you may want to be doing? And this is not a question about writing or writer’s block necessarily, as much as a question about how do you want to be spending your time, and are there things in your life that support you writing this? Many people have many things pushing against them, when they are working on their most important project.
I am learning to love my projects again, though.
And relationships are about transformation. Perhaps something like this is what I should do:
My book:
Table of Contents:
Introduction: My story/My philosophy
The fundamentals: Why adding more of these colors leads you to have a better / more colorful life and also leads you to solve complicated problems
Green: Respecting phenomenology and Being
White: Structure and Fairness
Blue: Clarity and Negotiation
Black: Tradeoffs and Stakes
Red: Passion and intensity
Advanced tactics: How to go from being merely good to being truly great
Conclusion: The secret to results that last.
(This scheme is borrowed from the table of contents of Atomic habits.)