Scott Laughlin

Many say that teaching and writing feed one other, but I tend to disagree. I teach high school, and when school begins, my fictive imagination shuts down. All of my creativity funnels into planning classes and thinking about assignments. The alarm sounds early, I spend my day matching the energy of adolescents, and then there’s that pile of essays, a fixture in any English teacher’s life. At night, it takes a monumental act of will to reach for the pen instead of a glass of wine.

Last spring, I approached the Dean of Faculty to ask if I could go part time this year in order to have more time to write. He agreed immediately and told me how impressed he was by my commitment to writing. Although grateful, I didn’t quite share his admiration for my decision.

Rather, I was consumed by doubt and questions, the familiar writer’s terrain. Would I stay up late drinking bourbon and watching episodes of “Breaking Bad”? Would I waste the mornings, sleeping in and reading in bed? Would I squander hours on email and other Internet emptiness? Would I take up some hobby like robotics or glass blowing? If and when I did sit down, would I write one good sentence, one good page? If I didn’t or couldn’t, exactly how deep would my despair be? Then there were financial considerations: how to watch my bank account dwindle as my credit card debt swelled.

As all writers know, it’s the easiest thing in the world not to write. The world conspires against us, hijacking our attention at every turn. Screens surround us and literally beckon to us (what’s your preferred text tone?), and other aspects of life call, too: our jobs, spouses, children, and friends, to name a few. All these demands swiftly detract from the task at hand.

In her wonderful book Mystery and Manners, Flannery O’Connor talks about “the habit of art.” What is a habit but something that’s ingrained, stuck. There are bad habits (chewing your fingernails) and good habits (exercising), and it takes a mental shift and an act of will to kick or gain one. O’Connor says, “Art is the habit of the artist; and habits have to be rooted deep in the whole personality. They have to be cultivated like any other habit, over a long period of time, by experience.”

Looking back at these past months of being part time, I feel proud because I spent my time well: I showed up. But what I find most valuable isn’t a particular story or chapter but finding something akin to what O’Connor is talking about: a habit.

“I think this is more than a discipline, although it is that,” O’Connor says.” I think it is a way of looking at the created world and of using the senses so as to make them find as much meaning as possible in things.” To embrace the spirit she’s talking about, one must pause.

When anything passes quickly, it’s difficult to see; it takes going to the page, where things move more slowly, in order to truly see the world. And when you open your door and go back out, you feel not just refreshed because you’ve done something that is truly good for you (a good habit) but because you’ve taken the time to cultivate a way of seeing and existing in the world that helps you to see that world more sharply, with greater vision. You remove yourself in order to see more clearly.

Last month, I was asked if I could return to full time before the end of the year: A colleague got pregnant, and the department needed someone to take her classes. I checked my bank account and had no choice but to say yes. As I sit here writing this, I’m staring at the reality of losing the valuable time I had before, but I wonder, how strong is this new habit? I have to ask, is writing an easy habit to kick? I certainly hope not.

Scott Laughlin teaches English at San Francisco University High School and is co-founder and Associate Director of DISQUIET: The Dzanc Book Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal. He studied at Boston University and New York University, and is currently enrolled in the MFA Program at Converse College. He has been published in the SF Bay Guardian, Post Road, ZYZZYVA, and will be included in the forthcoming book, Such Conjunctions.