This Matter of Mood
Some followers have commented on the long break with no new Maverick posts. After complaints from several people named in my memoir, I chose to make changes in previous chapters and in those upcoming. That required me to rethink and rewrite the last four chapters. I’ll post them over the next month.
In the interim, you might enjoy this piece about getting yourself moving when you feel stuck.
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This Matter of Mood
It’s Thanksgiving morning. I’m alone. It’s a perfect time to write. No interruptions. No calls. The house is quiet. I have no plans. Nothing to do all day but settle in and work. I get notes, thesaurus, stylebook, and back-up disk arranged on my desk. I’m excited, eager to start.
I punch a key to wake up my aging MacBook. As the hard drive whirs itself awake, a raspy voice inside me whines, “I don’t feeeeel like writing. I’m not in the mood.”
In my mind, a petulant five-year-old me with arms crossed, head cocked—stomps his foot, daring me.
“It’s a holiday,” the little pest moans. “It’s sunny out. We should go exploring on the mountain.”
I’ve learned you can’t win an argument with a five year old. If you do, you feel like an insensitive bully. If you don’t, a five-year-old directs your destiny.
I sigh, push back my chair, then stare out the window. The sunshine is lovely, I think, This could be the last nice day before our long, wet winter sets in.
Shaking my head, I retreat to the kitchen to brew tea. When it’s done, I grab a handful of chocolate chip cookies, then settle in front of the television set. Talk show guests chatter at each other, but I can’t concentrate.
*
Ray Bradbury’s advice to new writers nags at me. “If you want be a writer,” he said, “first write a million words.”
I switch off the TV, then head back to my desk. But instead of pulsing with meaning, my words spread across the screen in a sticky alphabetic mush.
“See!” sneers my pint-sized critic. “You can’t write today. Let’s play!”
My leg muscles twitch with the need to be up and moving. A million ants scurry under my skin. I shove myself up from my desk, thinking, “Maybe I should read something. Or go for a walk in the woods.”
Instead, I pace the hall muttering, “I gotta get motivated, I gotta get motivated.”
That is the point at which I used to give in.
*
The triumphant five-year-old and I would grab our windbreaker then walk to town. After a latté and cinnamon twist on the deck of Barb’s Buns bakery, I’d try to shame myself into writing by reading a piece from Best American Essays.
Or I’d cajole myself to practice Richard Rhodes’ Knickerbocker Rule.
“Apply ass to chair,” Conrad Knickerbocker, Rhode’s supervisor at Hallmark Cards, admonished him.
“That’s it,” I’d tell myself.” Just do it. Rhodes won a Pulitzer, didn’t he?”
The five-year-old scoffed at these manipulative, attempts to trick him into doing what he didn’t feel like doing. Leaning against the bakery deck’s railing, I might say, “How about we just sit here and make notes about people and what they say?”
He’d turn his head and stare up at me, wary. Just when I thought he might go for it, he’d snort, “No way, that’s work!”
*
Before I’d learned that momentum will get you through times of no motivation better than motivation will get you through times of no momentum, the five-year-old and I had frittered away more days than we filled with writing.
Then I discovered the “15-minute test,” which I’ll describe shortly.
I came by this excellent momentum-building technique from two diverse sources.
The first was a quote from Joyce Carol Oates, who said, in an interview in The Paris Review, “One must be pitiless about this matter of ‘mood.’ In a sense, the writing will create the mood. If art is, as I believe it to be, a genuinely transcendental function—a means by which we rise out of limited, parochial states of mind—then it should not matter very much what states of mind or emotion we are in. Generally, I have found this to be true: I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes … and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.”
Oates’s response put words to a discovery I’d intuited while trying to become a weekend road racer. Facing daily training runs, I struggled with this matter of mood. Two or three times a week, I’d come home from work frustrated and bone weary. I’d whine to my wife, “I’m too tired to run tonight. I’m gonna put my feet up and have a Scotch.”
A frown would work its way on to her face. She’d rub her hands together — we had history around this issue — and say, “Go for your run, honey. You’ll feel better.”
She was right. But the prospect of pounding hard pavement in the darkening afternoon of a cold, damp autumn day seemed overwhelming.
“There’s no way!” I’d moan. “I couldn’t even run a mile tonight, let alone five.”
I could trump any pro-running argument that she (or my conscience) might suggest by playing my Ace of Health.
With a carefully crafted crack in my voice, I’d snivel, “I think I’m coming down with something; I better stay in and rest.”
Then, trying not to grin, I’d add, “And perhaps take a wee dram or two for medicinal purposes.”
One night, having played my ace and braved my wife’s disdain, I’d just taken the Glenfiddich bottle down from the kitchen cupboard when I heard a calm, wise-sounding, inner voice ask, “Why not check it out?”
“What?” I replied. “Check out what? How?”
“See if you really are too tired,” the voice suggested. “Maybe your blood sugar’s just low. Try an experiment. Run for fifteen minutes, see what happens.”
“Fifteen minutes?” I said. “An experiment?”
“Yes,” said the voice, “That should bring your blood sugar up. If it does, your muscles will loosen, you’ll feel energetic, and build momentum.
If you don’t, perhaps there is something wrong. If so, quit, walk home, and enjoy your drink without guilt.”
I fingered the cap on the Scotch bottle.
“What can it hurt? It is only fifteen minutes.”
I left the bottle on the counter then went downstairs to change. I stretched stiff muscles, then slipped into my light rain suit, and stepped outside. Damp autumn air chilled me. I plodded stiff-legged down my street, then turned into a park and began a slow, lumbering jog. My muscles protested. Each step jarred my head.
“This is a mistake,” I muttered.
Alone in the park, I crunched along a cinder path that circled it. Every 30 seconds or so, I checked my watch. Fifteen minutes, I promised myself. No more.
I scanned my body for signs of illness or injury; found none. Disappointed, I chugged on, hoping for a symptom that would justify quitting. I could almost taste the Scotch and feel its warmth in my belly.
But, after two slow, warm-up circles of the park, I forgot about my watch and relaxed into a smooth, flowing rhythm. As I strode out onto the bluff overlooking downtown, I felt a surge of energy. Momentum built with every step.
Frustration dropped away. Tension melted like butter in a tropical sun. As my muscles loosened, I stretched out my stride and picked up my pace.
I ran down the hill to the river and along the path along its bank. I floated past the orange ribbon I’d tied to a tree, my three-mile marker, then jogged for another two miles. At the footbridge, I crossed the river and headed home.
I sprinted through the almost-darkDouglas Fir forest, sucking in its pungent, energizing scent. I pushed hard up the path’s steeps, coasted on its flats, and let my legs stretch out as I glided down its long gentle slope down to the river.
Ten exhilarating miles later, I jogged up my street, feeling like I’d just won the Boston Marathon.
Now I use the 15-minute test whenever my petulant five-year-old doesn’t feel like doing anything difficult that I know will move me closer to a result I care about.
Like drafting a new piece or writing query letters. I give myself to the task for fifteen minutes then see if my mood shifts. Nine times out of ten, I keep going.
Oates was right. The activity does change everything.
*
What makes the 15-minute test different from other motivational techniques?
It’s not manipulative. It’s not an attempt to force yourself myself to write. It’s not a trick I play on my five-year-old. Rather, it is an experiment that honours my desire to write and my feeling I am not in the mood.
On those rare occasions when, despite fifteen minutes of activity, lethargy refuses to release its bear hug on me, I quit. I go for a walk, read a book, write a letter to a friend, watch TV. I indulge myself without guilt, confident that the next time around the test will get me moving toward a productive writing session.
And the best thing about doing it as an experiment is that the five-year-old buys it.
“Yeah, sure,” he says, “if it’s just fifteen minutes.”
Motivation can get you started. But it’s rarely enough to keep you going, especially when your mood shifts.
Momentum is a more consistent force. It generates, as the Oxford dictionary suggests, “continuity derived from an initial effort.”
When you can’t produce that continuity through willpower, guilt, or fattening treat bribes, you might try a 15-minute test. It doesn’t matter if you move in the “right” direction. Write about anything. Or jog around a park.
The power of momentum works because it is easier to change direction once you’re moving than when you’re stopped. Just remember to promise yourself that you will quit if your mood doesn’t shift. And honour the promise.
Motivation is important, but in writing and other challenges, it’s momentum that separates the wannabe’s from the professionals.
*
When I taught skiing, I took a clinic with a Level Four, Senior Examiner, the crème de la crème of the ski world. An aspiring Level Two instructor asked him, “What’s the best way to get as good as you, fast?”
“Miles,” the Examiner said. “Put in the miles.”
Ray Bradbury would like that answer. In the same vein, one of my writing teachers told me, “Take care of the quantity and the quality will take care of itself.”
Momentum builds when you write, not just when you write well. Besides developing skill in craft, technique, and imagination, making writing a regular practice will help you develop what Flannery O’Connor called “the habit of art.”
Cultivating that habit will do more to help you survive and triumph over your anxieties and uncertainty than all the motivational tricks ever tried.
“We are what we repeatedly do,” wrote Aristotle. “Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
*
So what about that Thanksgiving morning?
Once I remembered to try the fifteen-minute test, I got writing, kept at it, and in less than an hour I’d written the rough draft of this piece.
The momentum that produced fueled a full day of writing on the book I hoped to publish. Later, when polished, it netted me a nice cheque and another tear sheet for my CV.
Most important, it moved me a couple of thousand words closer to my first million words.