Why do I find freewriting to be so myopic? And what does myopic even mean? I'll look it up online, since the dictionary is all the way in the other room, and whenever I bring it out it tends to stay out, though unused, for many, many days. According to wikipedia it originates in a Greek word having to do with shortsightedness. Funny that, because I remarked to my husband only this evening (I write this on Sunday night to be published at a later date, and in the morning) that so many things require you to take the long view about them, e.g. learning to play Yu-gi-oh! for instance, or getting a small business off the ground, or teaching the children to obey. None of these things are any fun in the short term. Well, maybe Yu-gi-oh! is, but only because Michael is taking the time to teach me to play using lots of open hands and the sharing of strategy. His training me to play these games (i.e. Risk, Yu-gi-oh!, perhaps even Dog Fight eventually) is part of our comittment to spend more dedicated time together, just the two of us.
I rely on Grammar Girl to straighten me out on the difference between i.e. and e.g. I can never remember how to use them for long. I'm happy to notice, after looking it up, that I didn't choose the wrong one in the wrong instance above.
Back to my myopia. Though freewriting is an incredibly useful exercise, I notice that what I tend to produce when I freewrite is gross. It's all about me and most of it is whining. And so I wonder what to do about that. Maybe it happens because I don't stick with it long enough to ever really get to the good stuff. I thought I noticed the same thing happening with Peter Elbow though when he shared, in Writing Without Teachers, examples of his own freewriting. So what does that mean? Maybe I don't stick with it for long because I get so very sick of myself when everything I write starts revolving around me, me, me.
One of the great struggles of my life, and there are many, revolves around recognition of my own self-centeredness, which then becomes a revolving door. The more I worry about it, the more focused on myself I get until I reach the point where I cannot possibly get out of it. My friend Damon, over at Greenhorn Gardening, calls this the death spiral. I notice that when I meet someone new, about all I can do is answer their questions about myself, and I have a very hard time remembering to ask questions of them, to get to know them. It's true that a factor of my personality is that I tend to get to know people over time, but geez, can't I at least start with a question? Can't I find a way to worry more about what they think (not about me, but in general) than I am about finding a way to express what I think? When I was in high school I used to go to the occasional party where I had no friends, because I felt that it was important to put myself out there, to risk myself in that particular way. My mother had told me to find someone there to make sure that they had a good time, by that method taking my mind off of my own social awkwardness. It worked at least two out of five times that I remember.
And in the organic and inner-dialogic nature of today's post, I now change the subject again, sort of, in a way, and draw attention to myself by saying that this is one of the reasons why I never became a journalist. Because I am lousy at asking questions. I tend to think that if there's something I need to know that someone will get around to telling me. I expect others to present not just what they want me to know, but also what I need to know, in which case there is no need for me to ask questions. And again, because of my personality, I often fail to think of my questions until later. Somehow I never managed to form the habit.
You'd think it might be because I never had it modeled for me, but that certainly isn't true. My Dad is the master of asking questions. We spent all my growing up years going from museum to festival to monument, with my Dad asking thoughtful and interesting questions all the while, and yet I never learned how to do it. For many years as I visited interior design installations during college, I expected my facial expressions to indicate my avid interest and sympathy with whomever was leading the tour or seminar or whatever it was. These days I am more aware of the way facial expressions can be misleading, speakers and docents don't always realize every detail the audience needs to have provided for them, and that if you don't ask people about themselves, occasionally they get the idea that you aren't even interested.
Do any of you reading this have a similar experience to any of those I have described above? Can you share strategies you've used to conquer your own social or literary myopia? What encouragement or caution or advice are you willing to give me?
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