Revising is Hard, But Rebelling is Worse
A compulsion towards self-help and writing guides led me to Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies, and for better or worse, I diagnosed myself as an“Obliger” (= “You can count on me”) plus “Rebel” (= “You can’t make me, and neither can I”). Rubin’s caution that “there’s no one-size-fits-all approach” to solving procrastination pushes me to psychoanalyze my habits and keep promises to myself, hour by hour and with my life’s goal of writing success.
I shuddered to hear Rubin say it can be “painful” to be a Rebel, but I can also turn my “can’t make me” stubbornness to my advantage. So I’m convincing this stubborn brain with Rubin’s “appeal to identity” approach: I want to be a good listener. I want everyone to feel a sense of belonging and value, including myself. My biggest pet peeve is people who don’t listen. When I don’t write I feel like the ignored youngest child of seven again: irritable, my thoughts sniping Why are you writing all this stuff anyway? Next I start to grumble inside about my kids, my partner, innocent strangers…you don’t want to be inside my head at such times.
Writing is the way I listen to myself, whether typing these words, scribbling in a journal, or working on a memoir about Japanese study with my Tokyo aunties during my befuddled twenties. I write to remind me who and what is worth my attention, since time really does seem to speed up in middle age. There’s more ad-generated schlock than ever trying to get me to doom-scroll away my precious remaining moments. I’ve lost count of how many occasions I’ve encouraged a friend about listening to their gut, while wondering how often I take my own advice. It’s much harder to listen to myself / write, but I also don’t want to be a hypocrite — another appeal to an identity I want for myself.
Acting as a listener /non-hypocrite / writer also means I revise and send these words out to you, “opening [my] internal world to another, or to the Other” as Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew explains. “[B]y setting our work in the context of history, social movements, religious thought, psychological explorations, and other external forces, we link the smallness of our memories (or imagined world) to that web of commonality that connects us as humans.” My chosen way to connect and keep kicking ass (including my own) is to take my words beyond my personal gripe and give them meaning.
Rubin suggests writing about personal heroes for motivation. Some of mine are writers whose words inspire me to go deeper into life’s mysteries. I’ve been thinking about how writing mentors since listening to Joe Loya speak about his on Brooke Warner’s Write-Minded podcast. Writer Richard Rodriguez helped Loya get his memoir The Man Who Outgrew His Prison Cell published. It was Rodriguez’s writing that first reached Loya in prison, and I’m going to write here about how the people I don’t know but whose words expand my world, like Mary Yukari Waters, Roxane Gay, and Yiyun Li, are my role models. They characterize an identity I want to emulate and put out into the world (to borrow Rubin’s words): experimentation, creativity, a sense of mission and belief in a cause. Stand by for more about their heroic spirit and others’ in future posts.
