Fallow

Alice on Sunday on Monday

Dear Readers,

I am on sabbatical and writing a novel. It is a new version of a book I began two years ago, though I have scrapped the first draft. It wasn’t bad; it wasn’t what I wanted though, not how I wanted the book to feel, either to me writing it or to a reader reading it. I have the sense that I know what I am doing. I know the characters, I know the plot. I should be able to sit down every morning and turn on the spigot. Usually that does happen. But there are some days when I pick up the pen and nothing arrives. I am distracted, fuzzy, bored, restless. This isn’t a block. It isn’t a failure of heart. It seems to me it is an aspect of a larger rhythm of composing a book that is beyond my control or analysis. I cannot get around it by force, and I no longer try. I call it a fallow day, and log it as I would any other writing day. It counts.

But how?

When I was little I loved to practice facing physical challenges I heard or read about. One was to walk across a forest floor making no noise, like an Indian girl. Another was to hold my breath under water for longer and longer intervals. Another was to make my way around the house blindfolded, without reaching out my hands or bumping into anything, like a bat. All of these practices would help me survive if there were a war. (Like many children, I feared war.) More than that, though, they were tests for myself, methods to discover my limits, to “Find out what I was made of,” a phrase my grandfather often spoke.

The fallow days are not as directed as that, but they serve a similar role. They are a signal that I need to regroup, to reset my mind to face the writing ahead. I have reached an outer limit, and it is time to consider what I am made of, or what the book is made of. What am I doing? My inability to turn on the words raises this question. What the H-E-double hockey sticks, as we said at school. (Quaint!)

A fallow day is not a scheduled break, so I don’t take a break. It isn’t a sign that I should go take a walk on the boards at Asbury Park. It is part of writing, so I stay in place. I set aside the bit I am working on and turn back to the drawing board, the big picture, and do some writing about what I am doing. What is this about? Why am I writing this book? What do I like about it? What more do I want it to be? I often have my students write letters about similar questions addressed to me or to a friend. I find the letter method of exploration to be the most useful, as it supposes a real human mind on the other side of it. Sometimes I discover that I have hit a fallow day because I have lost the sense of the broader human container for this book. I have gotten too isolated with the work, too focused on narrow issues, and have lost the flow…the knowledge that this little book is a part off the vast river of words that have poured for centuries into the large ocean of creation. I am only writing just one small book! But why? What am I doing? Back to basics.

I have already written about how I learned to end a daily session when I begin to question what I am doing. That’s a sign that my brain is tired, not that the work is bad. Right now that is happening after three hours. I am working to stretch it to five. This requires that the rest of life revolve around this time, which can happen now on sabbatical. For me that means turning Freedom on and the phone off, turning the lights out at nine and getting up at 5, reading excellent books, setting social media to 15 minutes a day, and so on. Once upon a time I read Brenda Ueland’s 1938 book If You Want to Write, and did it ever school me on how straight is the gait that opens on the writing life. I took it to heart and try to live with a sense of duty toward my own ability to concentrate. A fallow day signals that my brain is tired. That’s okay. It’s all part of making something outside the self. Fallow days feel particularly sensible in the winter, when many fellow creatures are hibernating. Step aside, but don’t walk away.

Recommendations

1. Here is what I am wearing while I write, to keep warm. No, it is not becoming, but it serves the purpose well. Blanket Hoodie

2. Eagles vs. Commanders 1/27/ 2025 at 3 p.m. In my dotage I have become an Eagles fan. What can I say. I began to watch to keep Mr. Dark company and now I get it. I can’t say I entirely understand the finer points, but I love Saquon Barkley, a great man if there ever was one, and I love the rhythm of the play. Will the Birds go to the Super Bowl this year? Fingers crossed.

3. Hilary Mantel. Genius. I am doing Simon Haisell’s Wolf Crawl here on Substack, a year of reading the Cromwell Trilogy. Footnotes and Tangents It’s great to have a witty, knowledgeable guide through these books (and to be told what to do!) My writer’s reading group recently read her memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. There are sentences in that book the likes of which I have never read. Par example: “For I imagine the devil, when he walks into the world, spruces himself in his dressing room, where the fire burns blue in its grate and the mirrors are draped with black. I imagine how he sleeks his rough fur with babies’ fat, polishes his teeth with ground bones, and swills his mouth with blood; then taking from its peg a tall shiny hat, he sets it upon his head to hide his horns.” … This becomes a unique and sophisticated depiction of a leap in development, the child’s mind shifting to a broader consciousness and self-consciousness. As she says: “This is the beginning of shame.” Shame engenders its antidote, eventually: writing.

4. Copying. I recently had a wonderful lunch with a former student, who told me that he has put into daily practice an exercise I suggested in class: copy out a book you love. I’m not going to spill the beans on what can be learned by doing this. That’s for you to find out. Hunter Thompson retyped The Great Gatsby and A Farewell to Arms, and became a great sentence writer himself. This trick is, you can’t do this by rote, while watching Friends re-runs. It’s a pursuit that reveals its utility through focus. Try a paragraph!

5. Take a virtual tour of Victor Hugo's house.

That’s it for this complicated day. Stay warm, donate all over the place, and be good.

xoxo, AED