Writing is an illness. Writers have to write, and yet they will do anything in their power to avoid writing.
—Greg Rucka to Nunzio DeFilippis‘s Writing for Sequential Art students, a few years ago
For two weeks, I’ve been abominably bad about writing, because I just haven’t felt like doing it. I’ve been doing my morning pages, keeping up with this blog, playing computer games, decluttering the house, and doing all kinds of other things (including kayaking!), but I’ve barely touched my writing projects. This can’t continue, both in the long run and in the short — the Hedgebrook application is due in a week. And yet “I don’t feel like writing” isn’t a problem that goes away for good. So, both to get myself out of it today and to help myself with it in future, I think it’s time for another round of Asking Simple Questions… (hey, that spells ASQ! hee!)
Q:Why don’t you feel like writing?
A (whiny voice): It’s too hard!
Q: What’s so hard about it?
A (still whiny): It takes too long. And it’s too much work to make it good.
Q: Does it have to take a long time? Could you just write for, say, 20 minutes at a time? That’s half the time it takes to do your morning pages every day.
A: I guess so…
A (suddenly offended): Hey, but it’s going to take longer than that to make it good! I can’t get by on 20 minutes a day of writing!
Q: It’s 20 minutes more than you’ve done for the past week.
A (caught): Bah.
And so it goes… a mental exchange like this is usually good enough to get me started, but pretty soon I’m back to the start again, and have to repeat the whole process. Sometimes it helps to remind myself why I’m writing, what my goals are, and what I want to make of my life. Sometimes I think of myself in fifty years, mediocre at everything, and that gets the fire going under my butt. But sometimes I just want to crawl into a hole and hide until then (or, more realistically, sit in front of the computer playing Chocolatier and pretending nothing else exists).
The only thing you can control about writing is your commitment to it. You can’t control publishers, readers, or even your own talent — but doing it every day is a call you can make.
–Greg Rucka
This is what I really have to remind myself. The only thing I can do is just write, as often and as much as I can, and after that que será será. I’m not writing to make something good, to prove myself to the world, or to publish a brilliant and original oeuvre of prose and graphic novels. I write because I hope these things will happen, but in the meantime the only choice I have is to sit down and do it. Every day, if possible. Just 20 minutes at a time, even when I don’t feel like it because I’m afraid it won’t be worth it. If I can’t write with delighted inspiration, I can write with grim determination… and that’s what I will go do now.
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 
Oh, I love that….”if I can’t write with delighted inspiration, I can write with grim determination.” Hope it works, but it doesn’t sound like much fun. Hmmm. I wonder where that idea comes from that everything should be fun?
This reminds me. There is a marvelous book by Arthur M. Abell titled “Talks with Great Composers”. The interview with Johannes Brahms is especially profound. Brahms talks at length about where true inspiration comes from. It’s been several years since I read this book, but if I recall he said (and I am paraphrasing) that a great artist (composer, painter, writer?) must know the mechanics and techniques of music inside out. But the inspiration itself comes from within. “Within” being from God, spirit, whatever you call that Higher Intelligence – and not from the mind. So instead of trying to think of what to compose, you spend much time waiting with a silent mind for the music to come bubbling up, seeking expression. The symphony alread IS, and the composer is the witness who writes it down. Of course, this means the ego must be in abeyance. I love this explanation of how inspiration can come into being.
Sherry, I’ve just requested that book from the library and can’t wait to receive it! (It’ll probably be a while. It’s coming from Nevada on interlibrary loan!) I don’t know if you’ve been reading this blog long enough to realize that I have a couple of decades of classical piano training under my belt. (I stopped in college when I got tendinitis in my wrists.) I’m no great pianistic genius but I did use to be pretty good. And I always love reading about other artists.
Many artists have said what Brahms felt, that creative guidance comes from somewhere, and they just take dictation from it. I have a few favorite expressions of this, which are all a little different. A couple of these:
Jackson Pollock: “The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.”
Degas: “Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.”
Oh, yes…exactly! And another one (I’m not sure who said it) about the sculpture already exsiting within the block of marble, and the sculpter just having to sense which corners, bits, and pieces to remove to reveal the statue. Wonderful, isn’t it?!……I think you will enjoy the book, Lisa.
I did pick it up somewhere in your blog that you were a pianist (and your husband, too, I think). Decades of playing would have to make you pretty accomplished, so I hope you will be able play again someday. Tendinitis does get better over time doesn’t it?
I hope it does get better over time. I try to stretch my wrists and arms but I forget! But I’ll have to keep up the stretching and strengthening if I want to do more painting, as well as writing.
I don’t know about everything being fun, but when I used to be in grad school, hating it, my mom would admonish me that “no job is fun all the time.” Too true, but I hated hearing her say it as a warning against leaving grad school. As I now know — because I work at what I love — there is a world of difference between not-fun activity I’ve chosen and not-fun activity I haven’t!
I hear you, Lisa! As you can tell I have been avoiding my own blog and I too have been doing other things. I also LOVE the Choclatier games 🙂 I have played them all! You cant go wrong with a game that is about travel AND chocolate!
I know!!! Erik was asking me what’s so compelling about these games, and I said, “Nothing. But they’re about chocolate.” Sigh!!
I’ve missed your blog — hoping to see you back there one of these days. 🙂