I may come to consider last summer a major turning point in my working life. For the last five months, starting in the summer, I've done less writing than in any comparable period of my life since the late 1960s. Throughout my career, I've written constantly, obsessively, working on several things at once. This summer, which began with the goal of finishing a draft to the Sally novel, ended with not even the first of three parts in draft. What I accomplished over the summer was deciding to change the point of view of the storytelling.
In the past, such little production (compared to my habit) would have depressed me. Yet I felt fine, figuring a major step forward had been made with the new point of view. This is a sensible judgement but not one to satisfy my old sprinting self. I seemed to be changing. Now, months later, I'm sure of it: I'm not writing with the same obsession and abandon, as if 1000 words a day were my very oxygen. In comparison, I am strolling through my drafts rather than racing through them. I still have many things going at once but none of them obsess me in the old style.
Some of it is biological, a slowing down physically, and writing surely has physical consequences. But I think most of it may be psychological ... a realization that what I have to say will not reach many readers, so what's the big rush? I've no doubt already said most of what I have to say as a writer.
I still have several projects of great interest to me, and I expect to finish them. But they don't keep me awake with the same haunting compulsion and occasional terror with which my work used to haunt me. I don't think I'm getting mellow. I think I'm getting tired.
Thus I'm filling more of my time with non-writing projects, like editing the review and taking piano lessons. (And still teaching, of course.) My writing life has found a very different rhythm from its pacing over the last forty years. I find this a fascinating observation.
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