Shi Tiesheng
Being Ill Is the Job; Writing Is the Sideline
Put the illness in first position
Shi Tiesheng, Scattered Notes in the Gaps of Illness, 2002
How to lay out a day around a long illness. What Shi Tiesheng meant by calling illness his profession, and how to use it.
What actually happened?
From 1998 he had kidney failure: dialysis three times a week, four hours at a time, and a day afterwards with nothing left in him. The book he wrote in those years was written in the gaps between sessions, and the title says so. In it he puts the arrangement plainly: being ill is my profession; writing is what I do on the side. Not a joke about himself. A working order. Once the order is admitted, there is no need to be angry every evening about how little got written, and the few usable hours all get used.
Illness goes first so the rest of the time can work
Anyone who refuses to admit the illness is the main job spends each day competing with it for time, loses, and then spends what is left in resentment. He reversed it. Give the illness every hour it demands first; what remains is genuinely yours, with no minute lost to anger.
Fix treatment and rest into the calendar first. What is left is my time. Do not do the arithmetic the other way round.
A book can be written in the gaps
Two or three hours between sessions will not hold a novel, so he wrote fragments instead, one piece at a time. The form followed the time available rather than waiting for a clear stretch. Clear stretches were not coming back, and waiting for them is giving up.
If all you have is broken time, do work that comes in pieces. Do not hold out for a whole day.
On the side does not mean carelessly
He calls the writing a sideline, and that book took four years. On the side describes the ranking, not the standard: behind the illness, and every paragraph written properly. Admitting that your strength is limited and doing sloppy work are two different things.
If you have strength for one small thing, do that one thing properly. Less is not licence for worse.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you have a condition you will carry for years, or you have been flattened a long time, and every day hurts because you cannot do what you used to.
Ask first: if the illness is the main job and goes first, how many hours are actually left? What is the smallest thing those hours can hold?
Where it goes wrong: reading it as permission to stop. He was on dialysis for twelve years and produced several books. This is about admitting the order and using the gaps, not surrendering them.
Lines to keep
Give the illness its hours first; what is left is yours.
The clear stretches are not coming back. Waiting is giving up.
Limited strength and sloppy work are two different things.
Same situation, other people are asking
The results came back and I can't open them.This is mine for the rest of my life.Someone at home is ill and I'm not allowed to fall over.Every test is normal and I still can't leave the house.I got sick · all 6 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.