For better or for worse, I’m a compartmentalizer.

I was thinking about this because one of the (many) contributing factors to my current blue mood is the fact that I’m not as far along in my novel revision as I (a) thought I was and (b) planned to be. I only know this because I’m going to the AWP Conference for the first time (maybe I’ll see you there?) and applied for their Writer to Agent program where you write a query letter to see if anyone may be interested in representing your book. If you’ve never written a query letter before, one of the things you’re supposed to include is the book’s word count, and the program’s directions were very clear that you need to signal whether your book is finished or not.

The original (rough, unreadable) draft is over 100k words.

The current draft is a little over 10k. If the expectation for the final draft is that it’s 50-60k, that means I have only finished revising 10% of the novel. TEN PERCENT.

I thought I was at least at 50% done. So that was a rude awakening.

My long ago hope and dream was to have the current draft finished by the end of January and then, when that didn’t pan out, by the time our semester started mid-February.

Clearly, I am far behind that goal. Part of the reason is that I had to course prep in February (hence the end of January goal) and then, as mentioned several times previously, my schedule got completely changed because of enrollment. Obviously, I am happy always to make my contract rather than not, so it sucks that my schedule got changed, but it is what it is. I also knew that was a possibility because of previous spring semester schedule shifts, so it was annoying but not really a surprise, especially since I knew enrollment was down. So again, that’s why I wanted to be done by the end of January.

I had a nice little plan in place to finish. Since we’re back to a winter semester, I decided to take a one-week vacation to my friend’s cabin in the woods. A friend of mine also had that week off, and she’s also a writer, so I invited her to go along. The day we drove up. the fires in LA happened. To be clear, the day we drove up, the Palisades fire had started, but by the time we got to where we were going, the Eaton Canyon fire had also started and both were moving fast.

So this is where the compartmentalizing comes in. Obviously, the first night we were following the news and checking in with people as well as getting settled in. Then, the next day I planned to sit down and get to work. I was far from the fires, so couldn’t do anything about them. I was going to write and periodically take breaks to check the news/check in with people and then do a deeper dive when I had decided I was finished working for the day. Which would have been fine if I were by myself. But I was not by myself. I was with someone who would not stop checking her phone, would not stop calling people, and would periodically wail/yell, “This is NOT okay! These people are not going to be okay!” Then, she would ask me what I was doing, to which I would respond, “Well, I came here to write,” and then she would continue to pace and wail and tell me how things weren’t okay and give me constant updates on what was happening. This went on for at least three days.

Now. I am not a monster. These are all perfectly acceptable and reasonable things to do in the face of tragedy. They are not things I would necessarily do (besides keep checking for updates and talking to people on the phone) and certainly not things I would do when I knew I only had a limited time to try to hit a goal. However, like I said at the top of the post, I’m a compartmentalizer. I would do the things I wanted/needed during the day and then have a meltdown at night, preferably alone in my room. I also find being busy helpful to keep me from ruminating, especially when there’s nothing I can physically do to change something. I went to work the day my great-grandmother died because the alternative would have been sitting at home and…what? Thinking all day about the fact that she died and then sitting there until the next day when I had to work? She lived very far away, my mom lived very far away, and I had no immediate way to get to either of them. Was I kind of out of it and moving through water? Yes. But I needed and welcomed the distraction of being in the classroom.

It was the same when the COVID stay-at-home order was issued. I was SO glad that we moved to online, and I was happy for many of my students that we moved to online because what was the alternative? Sitting around all day NOT doing stuff and then thinking about how I wished I was doing something? It gave me a way to channel my frustration and ultimate helplessness/powerlessness over everything that was happening. And, as I pointed out several times, when Anne Frank was locked in that attic, she took correspondence courses, which made her feel better both about her present and hoped for future.

Slice of Life is a writing challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers.

However, the one thing I can’t compartmentalize is other people having emotional reactions. I can’t ignore someone else’s anxiety or sadness. Part of that, of course, is that it’s immediate and real so there’s no distance between me and the person like there usually is during an event like the fires when we were so far away. The other part is my incessant, codependent reaction of “I’m only okay if you’re okay” and wanting to jump in and do emotional management so that the person will calm down and stop stressing me out because I can’t do anything to make them feel better. And it’s the latter that really drives me crazy and makes it hard for me to focus. Everything else I can push away and turn off until I’m ready to deal with.