Since September, I’ve been on sabbatical from work. I’m a creative writing and English professor, and one of the benefits of that is the option to take a sabbatical every few years, with university approval of my plan. Most professors write their academic books heavily during these, but I’m creative writing, so I’ve been writing poetry. As such, I wasn’t sure how it would go. I went into the whole thing with some serious writer’s block. My first few days were, writing-wise, best described as “flailing around.”
I got in touch with a friend to be my accountability person and writing “partner.” A sincere thank you, Nikki Allen. I also got involved with Jeremy Richards and his new writing coaching plans. That included a personal coaching session and his online course. I read his book, The Accomplished Creative, and it helped get me going. I also finally started reading Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, though I’ll admit I’m still somewhere in the middle of it. Once I got going for real, it became something I read a little here and there, not something I was determined to finish. I did incorporate Morning Pages into my writing process because of it, though. Oh, I also read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. So I was working my way through a focused set of books on creativity and how it works.
My goal with this time was to write seriously about my childhood, from which I have PTSD. I had a childhood of neglect or of being controlled, both by my parents and the church (dad was, after all, a preacher). I’ve been in therapy for a few years now with a counselor that I really like, and I’ve seen some results, so he was working with me, indirectly, for this project. Not the poetry side, of course, but talking me through some of the ways my childhood has messed with me as an adult.
The biggest thing I did as part of this, though, was the trip. In November, I drove back from Ohio, where I’ve lived for several years now (23 of the last 25 years, I think), to Tennessee and Virginia, and I visited several of the towns where I grew up. It was several days of driving to see the majority of my childhood churches and houses. That will deserve its own post, but I’m noting it here to say this was a part of my sabbatical. Lots of pictures, lots of memories. Stay tuned for that one in the next few days.
So far, as of today, I’ve written 118 poems since September as well as a couple of essays. I’ve got to edit them, and I’ve got to work on getting more poems published, but it’s been a very productive sabbatical. I didn’t just write about my childhood, of course, but it was the focus. I’ve had some epiphanies as I went, figured out a lot about my family dynamics and childhood, found a little more peace. I’m still working on it, still writing, still processing the ideas from the trip. I’m grateful that I had the chance to do this, and I look forward to doing it again in several years, with hopefully a less personal topic.
Bill Abbott, poet, web page 