“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”
-Stephen King, On Writing
I didn’t post on the blog last week. I didn’t do a whole lot of writing, either, last week or the week before. I’ve felt frustrated and guilty about that, despite having good reasons: We had a family member in and out of the hospital; work got busy in the final push before a project launch; I had multiple freelance commitments to keep; and my wife had her graduation ceremony to celebrate the completion of her accelerated nursing program.
In other words, I didn’t write much the last couple weeks because of
life. The good, the bad, and the busy-ness of it all. If a friend were telling me this, and then confessed to feeling guilty about how little writing they’d managed, I would rush in to point out that there's no reason for guilt – writing can’t and won’t always be the priority.
But we’re kinder to friends than we are to ourselves. “You know you could have done more,” says the voice in the back of my head. Then it brings out the file marked
Wasted Time. "You didn't have to play Wordle. You could have watched less TV. What's more important, reruns of
Frasier or hitting your word counts?”
Maybe it has a point, but this doesn’t strike me as a good habit of thought. There’s enough going on in the outside world, I don’t need my internal monologue to be a stream of recriminations. Instead, I'm going to turn the to focus to more positive things.
This isn’t so much about being a Pollyanna as it is a recognition of the brain’s plasticity. If we are the result of our thoughts, then we should probably exercise a little deliberation about what those thoughts actually are. Otherwise, that dark little corner of your brain will be all too eager to fill the void by reminding you how you wasted a full thirty minutes running back to the grocery store because you forgot to buy ricotta cheese.
Professional obligations are a reminder of how a professional works.
Yes, my day job got busy, and yes, taking on freelance can sometimes make for long days. But the positive here is the reminder that I know what it takes to be a professional.
In his book Turning Pro, Steven Pressfield lists some of these qualities.
The professional shows up every day. The professional stays on the job all day. The professional is committed over the long haul. ... The professional seeks order. The professional demystifies. The professional acts in the face of fear. The professional accepts no excuses.
Most of us can see these qualities in ourselves in the way we perform our day jobs. At the very least, the first two – showing up and staying on the job – are non-negotiables to gainful employment. When I get discouraged about writing fiction, or my ability to make time to do it, it's worth remembering that I know how a professional works. My day job sharpens skills I can apply to how I write fiction.
Pressfield makes another important observation to anyone who, like me, drives themselves to frustration and fatigue. He writes:
I got the chance a few years ago to watch a famous trainer work with his thoroughbreds. I had imagined that the process would be something hard-core like Navy SEAL training. To my surprise, the sessions were more like play. He explained:
"A horse is a flight animal. Even a stallion, if he can, will choose flight over confrontation. Picture the most sensitive person you've ever known; a horse is ten times more sensitive. A horse is a naked nervous system, particularly a thoroughbred. He's a child. A three-year-old, big and fast as he is, is a baby. Horses understand the whip, but I don't want a racer that runs that way. A horse that loves to run will beat a horse that's compelled, every day of the week. I want my horses to love the track. I want my exercise riders to have to hold them back in the morning because they're so excited to get out and run.
Never train your horse to exhaustion. Leave him wanting more."
Recognize the seeds that are blooming. While my guilty conscience was kicking me around the last couple weeks, I got some great news: A story I’d been struggling to place was finally accepted. It was a piece I couldn’t give up on – there’d be a round of submissions, a round of rejections, and I’d put it away for a while. But every time I read it with fresh eyes, I would think, no, there
is something here, and send it back out in the world.
Because I wasn’t writing very much, I downplayed the acceptance. “Oh, sure it’s good news,” I told myself, “but what have you written
lately?”
That kind of pessimism isn’t new for me. The length of time that goes by between writing a story and getting it published makes it easy to think that the person you are now is not the person you were then, and during the interim you’ve become a terrible writer. As you can imagine, that’s not good for the work. Here’s how Bonnie Friedman describes it:
“If, while writing, you must always be proving that you write well, the writing will suffer. … One must arrogate the permission to write. One must shrug before icons.”
What a grim thing writing becomes when you turn publication into a chance for self-flagellation. In some sense, it's an iconography of the past in which Old You is somehow imbued with supernatural powers that Present You can no longer possess.
So instead, shrug before the icon. Enjoy the success. Take publication for what it is – a seed finally in bloom, and a reminder of why you keep sowing.
Remember your priorities. Stephen King has written some very famous words, but it’s hard to think of any lines that get quoted and re-quoted by writers more often than the ones at the top of this blog. Here’s a longer version, as it appears on the back cover of the hardback edition of
On Writing:
“For years I dreamed of having the sort of massive oak slab that would dominate a room … In 1981 I got the one I wanted and placed it in the middle of a spacious, skylighted study in the rear of the house. For six years I sat behind that desk either drunk or wrecked out of my mind ….
A year or two after I sobered up, I got rid of that monstrosity and put in a living-room suite where it had been …. In the early nineties, before they moved on to their own lives, my kids sometimes came up in the evening to watch a basketball game or a movie and eat pizza …. I got another desk—it’s handmade, beautiful, and half the size of the T. Rex desk. I put it at the far west end of the office, in a corner under the eave …. I’m sitting under it now, a fifty-three-year-old man with bad eyes, a gimp leg, and no hangover. I’m doing what I know how to do, and as well as I know how to d it. I came through all the stuff I told you about … and now I’m going to tell you as much as I can about the job ….
It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”
Aside from the essential wisdom of this, what stands out to me as I read it now is the part about his kids eating pizza. As writing, it’s not very descriptive – I don’t know what the kids look like, what kind of evening it is, or even what’s on the pizza – and yet it conjures up such a vivid image. I don’t
need more description because I recognize the moment so well.
It’s a moment that makes up real life, like watching your wife shake hands with her dean, cooking dinner for your in-laws, or marveling at a black-and-white sonogram sent by your sister. Would any of these moments be worth exchanging for more time to write? Or is it more likely you’ve already got things the right way around?
