practice and anticipation
sometimes being sad in rite-aid leads to inspiration
I have one of these pink high-bounce balls. Sometimes I throw it against the floor, catch it, and repeat, while pacing around my apartment. There’s a cycle of movement here: throw, wait, catch.
I think I bought this ball on an impulse while feeling sad in a Rite-Aid (my memory is fuzzy). Rite-Aid is so depressing. When I brought it home and started throwing it, catching it, throwing it again, my feelings lifted a little. There was something about the rhythm that calmed me down.
I used to say that I had an “anticipation problem.” It was hard for me to wait, but also hard for me to begin, like a car that keeps revving up but can’t go. Two examples come to mind:
The temporality of early college years: I would spend the day floating through my schedule, thinking about working on a piece of writing, but when I finally returned to my dorm after classes, I would get wrapped up in a TV show or video game and spend the evening doing that. I would be deeply uncomfortable in a bodily way: itchy-feeling, wanting to take action, to move, to start what I said I wanted to start—but I couldn’t begin. Eventually, I would do the thing, but only when the feeling of anticipation became unbearable.
An incident with a pair of glasses: I once ordered a pair of glasses to replace a pair I’d been wearing for about 3 years. For some reason, waiting for these glasses became a loop of anticipation. I noticed I was going through my days with as little movement as possible, because I wanted the days to pass easily, so I could be closer to the new glasses. The thought that I would have to do all these other things before I could have the glasses was oddly painful.
Leaving aside whatever those glasses were representing for me, the pain that came from waiting seemed related to the media-consumption anticipation problem. It seemed like the kind of habit you might go to a therapist with: a maladaptive, compulsive behavior from which you need relief. Some might point to circumstances of my childhood causing inherent anxiety. That’s fine, and learning to manage anxiety is helpful in its own way. But I’d tried forms of “relief” before—allowing myself to stop, trying not to berate myself or be a perfectionist—and the simple fact was that the feeling did not go away until I moved. I needed to complete the action to resolve the anticipation.
I felt this way when working on writing projects, too. I’d start a new project and think, Is this the one, the story I will finally finish? The one that will someday be accepted by an agent and an editor? The one that will carry my name on its spine? Unsurprisingly, writing wasn’t fun with that pressure hanging over the work.
I tricked myself into finishing things with the promise that first drafts were just for me. But once the story was “done,” anticipation about publishing crept back in. I would have to wait for answers, wait for acceptance, wait for appearance… and then, what, wait for attention? To me, it felt like waiting to exist. The completion of the movement was locked behind a series of doors I had no power to open. After throwing that ball down, it would hover in the air, with my hand poised above it, and never come back.
Eventually I decided that I needed to complete the movement—at least once—just to feel better. I launched an experiment: I wanted to learn to typeset and produce PDFs of my own work.
Creating the work involved a few steps:
Finish a version of the novel/essays that I was satisfied with (the hardest part, lol)
Learn a sustainable method for typesetting
By “sustainable” I mean a way without perpetual expenses. I used Affinity Publisher as a replacement for Adobe InDesign (because Adobe is an expensive subscription service). Affinity is a one-time purchase of $54.99. But, with a little effort, you can also use Word (or the free LibreOffice) to create workable layouts that can be exported to PDFs.
I used online tutorials to learn how to set up my document in Affinity and created a few practice PDFs.
*One note: my day job in publishing contributes to my knowledge here; I review PDFs of books for a living. But, by studying the designs of published books, you can see the things that make a book look “good,” and take or leave those elements accordingly. (If you really want to know the specifics, you can look at the proofreading section of the Chicago Manual of Style in a bookstore.)
As an example: I think it’s more interesting to note the duration of the project rather than a “publication” (or copyright) year. So, my projects that took place over more than one year include the whole range at the end of the document, instead of the traditional single year.
Find a sustainable place to make the work available
I wanted a place to put the work that was not expensive, did not require me to constantly advertise myself, and could be easily linked. I could have hosted the PDFs on my own website (which I pay for: $18/month, $20/year for the domain), and I still think that’s a great way to do it. Posting on a place like Substack is also an option (though I still cross-post my Substack posts to my website; Substack is just a platform, and will someday need to be profitable, so it’s likely to get ruined). But, I had one additional wish: that the place was maintained outside of me, so that the work could, at least in theory, be discoverable.
Enter the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is most well-known for the Wayback Machine, an online archive of web pages which essentially preserves the history of the internet. They also host film, newscasts, radio broadcasts, books, and a lot more. The IA allows you to create an account and upload content to the archive under any Creative Commons license you like, and also includes a handy in-browser reader function for PDFs. The site isn’t always intuitive, but I find this sort of endearing. The clunkiness feels familiar, and reminds me of websites I liked as a kid.
The IA is a nonprofit, and since I’m making use of its features, it’s only right to occasionally donate. In the future, I hope to make my donation consistent.
The books are shared under a noncommercial Creative Commons license, which means they can be shared, adapted, and remixed in any way, as long as the work is not distributed for money and includes attribution to the original work. There are other variations of the CC license, and the archive shows you what they mean.
But what about readers?: I have to admit that hunting for readers is not a high priority for me. In a loud world overstuffed with content and ads, I don’t want to contribute to the drain on people’s attentive energy with self-promotion. That’s why this method works for me: my writing can just exist, I don’t need to be a salesman, and people can choose to engage (or not engage) with it however they want. I get what I need from the work by doing it.
When I uploaded the first PDFs, the completion of the movement finally occurred. It was over. I could move on. I could start over. Now, no matter what happens, I know I can create books myself. Wherever I decide to take my work, I can always return here. I feel calmer, more patient, more curious, and more open to other possibilities for what I might do in the world. I’m not so brutally fixated on the imaginary rewards of a single accomplishment.
Our current society would love for everyone to be focused solely on individualistic goals. Preferably a goal that is competitive, with lots of institutional barriers and rules for success. Taking this bit of autonomy in my writing gives me more energy to participate in new ways. It also makes me feel more hopeful in general. We’re going to need energy and hopefulness, and less striving toward capitalistic success, to make the systematic changes our world requires. It’s not an overstatement to say that existence itself is on the line. If we feel anticipatory or anxious in our bodies, we shouldn’t “heal” ourselves in order to become better TV-watchers, social-media scrollers, and side-hustlers. Some behaviors classified as disordered may be perfectly reasonable reactions to intolerable circumstances.
As far as the actual writing, it’s simultaneously easier and harder. I have only myself to please, but I am a tough critic. I’m free to consider new forms and formats, but I have to decide what my priorities are. It’s a practice in decision-making and attention as much as a practice in writing. But most importantly, I love that it’s possible to work on a novel for three years and then simply let it go. What an immense relief.
I think humans are drawn to creative practices for more than didactic, self-actualizing, or even self-expressive reasons. Tapping into this might help us build up our escape velocities, to release ourselves from loops of consumption or achievement. In other words: maybe it’s just about the movement.