Trying to Write, or How I got my PHD and a Tenure Track Job Despite Being Bi-Polar

 Trying to Write

    Until now I have hidden how difficult it has been for me to write. All writing is difficult, but during manic or hypomanic periods it was more difficult.  Before diagnosis I didn’t know I had rushing thoughts. I thought that I was just mentally undisciplined. After diagnosis I realized that you can’t really “have” rushing thoughts because they are moving too fast to hold on to, like viewing new scenery from a speeding car. When my ideas were freely associating in a rush of non-linear leaps and sprints, it could be an intensely creative time, but I was unable to work on one thing for more than fifteen minutes or so, sometimes less. I didn’t know I read faster than normal until I was in Grad School and a classmate asked me, “ Did you take speed reading or just speed?” In my teens, when I started writing, poetry attracted me because fussing over every syllable of a poem was a way of being obsessive but productive in short spurts. I was intrigued by the possibility that like a jazz improvisation, a short poem could take shape in fifteen minutes, whether a first draft or a throwaway. It takes much, much longer to write even a “throwaway” play or novel.

     Switching from trying to write to trying to play the piano is how I usually work to this day, although since diagnosis and medication I can work longer at either activity. Since I was first learning I never set myself goals on piano; I couldn’t do that without getting hopelessly obsessive. For example, if I made a mistake on a series of Hanon exercises I would have to start over at the beginning of the book. Once I realized the mistake of trying not to make mistakes, I learned to refresh my brain every fifteen minutes by walking around a little. I would then pretend to be just starting my practice session by working on a different song, or by playing scales instead of arpeggios, or working on rhythms after having worked on harmony or melody. Without realizing it, I learned to channel my manic restlessness into a fragmented series of ostensibly “non-sequitur” activities between which I could move, instead of flitting between less productive habits such as pacing, talking fast, pulling my hair, chewing on pencils or fingers or walking out the door at 3 in the morning with no destination. Now that I am drawing again I have a third creative activity that relieves my brain with a non-verbal, non-musical mode of consciousness.  I have found this to be a great relief, because even on medication I still have more or less hypomanic periods, just as before diagnosis I had more or less manic episodes. Drawing slows down rushing thoughts by quieting them. Like piano, drawing is something very physical that helps get me out of my head when I’m experiencing depression, too. Over time I have learned to pick up the thread of writing again after playing piano or walking or drawing, whatever physical activity broke up the intensity of sitting and trying to keep up with my thoughts on paper. Sitting has often been a problem. It becomes physically and mentally painful for me to stay in the seat at a certain point.  I get excruciatingly restless legs if I try to force myself to remain seated. This has been a problem for me on airplanes, in theatres, and when working on a deadline.

 One of the most excruciating experiences of my life was the first time I set out to finish a paper worth publishing in a major journal. I came late to graduate school . I was almost forty. By the early 90’s getting a publication or two while still in school had become rite of passage for almost all postgrad students in the Humanities; part of the premature professionalization caused by running schools like corporations in a free market.  I decided to enter it in the Student Essay Contest of the prestigious journal, TDR (The Drama Review: A Journal of Performance Studies). Unlike my dissertation, there was a definite deadline for my entry into the contest.  My memory of writing my entry is a blurred image of me forcing myself to return to an uncomfortable seat over and over and over again, like I was caught in a whirlpool between the compulsion to walk way and the gravity of my essay.  This was after I  went to the Computer Center, where there was nothing to do but stare at earthe screen or write. Every time I stood up to walk away there, I painfully forced myself to sit down again. I told myself that I didn’t have to write, but I had to stay with the work.  I had to sit in front of it, keep it company, as if biding my time with an enemy that held me captive. If I did that long enough I would start writing again. I knew that if I was able to keep turning around and sitting back down, I would greatly compress and increase the amount of time I spent per day on actually writing. I was able to move forward once I got back into reading what I had written, alternating between fixing details and sifting through the whole of it, straightening out the ideas into a linear flow. But writing that way was excruciatingly more difficult for me than breaking a habit or installing a new one, it was a matter of fighting almost instinctive urges. It is hard not to develop a resentment toward something that causes so much stress, and it is hard to finish a project when you hate it.

  A few weeks after my completed entry was mailed off or e-mailed (this was in the 90s, so it could have been either) I received word that I had indeed won the TDR Student Essay Contest with my article, “Reading the Ventriloquists’s Lips: The Performance Genre Behind the Metaphor.” My professors and fellow graduate students seemed genuinely excited for me but somewhat surprised. I was not surprised, and not out of manic grandiosity or run-of-the-mill egotism but because I WORKED SO DAMN HARD ON IT! Later that year I learned that the article had been submitted by TDR for the Gerald Kahan Prize for the Best Essay in Theatre Studies by a younger scholar. This was an even more prestigious award, administered by the American Society for Theatre Research. I won that too. The essay ended up being the last chapter in my dissertation, although it was the first I was able to finish.

The article and its two awards were why I was able to get two interviews for a tenure track job after sending out thirty or so applications  (nation-wide)  in the two-year period I was at Stanford doing a Post-Doctoral Fellowship, (which meant I was a slightly glorified Teaching Assistant.) About that time I received a shock. Oxford was publishing a book on the same topic by a much more well-known scholar.This was a major reason that I didn't get a book contract in time for tenure and lost my dream job. That is another, longer story.