Time Management Tuesday: Slow Writing--Not A Process but a Lifestyle for the Few, Not the Many

I am finishing my slow writing arc today. There's a sense of accomplishment for you, even though what I've learned these past few weeks suggests that slow writing, assuming it exists as a process at all, probably has nothing to do with time management and productivity and everything to do with lifestyle and privilege. Oh, well.

To recount:

Week 1  Slow Writing In November Instead Of NaNoWriMo?

Week 2  Week Two Of Slow Writing Trying to pin down what slow writing is.

Week 3 Slow Writing and Privilege

Last week I said the first two items in John Fox's  A Manifesto for Slow Writing  at Book Fox were worth giving some thought. And then I gave some thought to the first. Well, now I'm going to give some thought to the second.

Fox says in Item 2 that slow writing isn't about the completion of a project, it's about "becoming a certain type of person." He goes on, "The writer is successful if they can attune themselves to a certain kind of consciousness. The project-based method for writing is one that will only end in unhappiness. Slow writing is about being, not completing."

First off...it is not about the completion of a project. That is extremely significant for writers who are looking for ways to do just that. Slow writing, Fox is saying, is not for you.

On the other hand, what Fox is talking about is what I have been working toward since 2008 when work went to hell for me. I've grown to love sitting at my desk in front of my laptop for a few hours a day, even though what I do there does not get me the kinds of completion (book publication) I was getting pre-2008. I love researching all kinds of work-related things. Children's publishing is pretty much done with me, and I'm not despairing over that, because I've moved on to other kinds of writing, and I have those to explore and work with. I write, because I'm a writer. I am attuned to that consciousness.

During Week Two, I wrote about Nicole Gulotta who described "slow writing as not so much about reducing your speed as it is about reducing your scope. It's a lifestyle." I most definitely have changed my scope. I work differently now, because I'm doing different work. (Aside--I just noticed that Gulotta has a manifesto at the end of her slow writing piece, which is what Fox calls his article on slow writing. Why do slow writing advocates feel they need manifestos? I hate manifestos.)

But, Gail, Doesn't Living Like That Mean You're Not Generating Much Income?

Indeed, it does. Slow writing, as I realized last week, works best for the privileged writer. I am the poster woman for privilege, if you don't define privilege in terms of Ivy League educations, second homes on Martha's Vineyard, wearing brands other than Lee jeans, and traveling on every continent (How many are there?) but in terms of having someone else provide you with a roof over your head, food on your table, and time. I am that kind of low-level privileged. 

My family has never had to rely on my income, which is a damn good thing, because even when I was making "regular" writing money, it wasn't all that regular. That's why I can spend a great deal of my time reading about and thinking about whether or not slow writing is a process that can help me produce more work instead of, ah, producing more work. That's how privileged I am.

The slow writing lifestyle probably isn't for writers who have to maintain a day job or who juggle with adjunct teaching jobs at several colleges in order to make enough money to live. It's probably not for the writer I read about a few years ago who had to line up grant money so she could afford to take maternity leave from writing for a few months. It's not for the writer I've seen on Medium who describes having to produce nineteen-plus pieces a writing a month to generate the monthly income she needs and how she's going to have to have writing stockpiled so that in the future, if she gets sick again and can't work for two weeks, she has something to submit, publish, and make money on.

I just don't see what I've been able to learn about slow writing helping any of those writers.

For myself, though, I'm going to lean into that slow writing lifestyle. For a few years, I've been doing something in December that is definitely what I'm now thinking of as slow writing. I can only do it, though, because I don't have to generate income next month.

More about that another time. 

Prologue: I checked out a preview of The Art of Slow Writing by memoirist and essayist Louise DeSalvo. It appears to combine various writers' experiences with some traditional time management talk about protecting time. I didn't see anything that defined "slow writing" as a distinct process. But I didn't see the word "manifesto," either, so that was promising.