HOW WORK GETS DONE. It’s not often, as writers, artists, we talk about our work. We prefer our work to talk for us. But I do wonder sometimes what people think, how we get to where we get with our work. And where our work (ideas) comes from. Now Stephen King answered that well, why does it come, not from where. And how does it come, maybe that’s another one. What process is required, what channel, what conduit. And what experience maybe. And why do we write? Why do we give ourselves to our craft like swine to the lake? It’s not easy to say because it could change tomorrow, or it might be different for each one, and maybe you don’t want to know and maybe I don’t want to tell you, don’t need to talk about it. But it was one of the jobs on my list this morning, the last, and I have not yet written something about it so I can cross it off and say job done for the day. The fact is, I have had five other little ideas previous to this one that I woke up with and saved in order on my little pocket machine so I could work it from the desktop when I got up. That was around the darkest hour, before first light. It normally works that way. It’s as if the brain works in one way during the day, and another at night. At night it switches over to the other part and from there draws information from the part that was active during the day. But I can hardly vouch for that. Because the ideas, when they come, come from no place I know at all. I only know that they come. And my job, once they come, is to drop everything and write something about it. Nothing else matters. Everything else comes second. And I mean everything. So this for me has become the pattern, I receive my jobs for the day, my allotment of ideas, and that is my work cut out like the leather the night before, for the elves to work away till the morning. Only my cobbling takes place in the day, using the ideas deposited into the box overnight. And I work away with those ideas, plodding as such, until something stands for each one. Then I can cross them all off the list and say great, thanks, job done, now I can relax and just take it easy. Maybe go and sit in the sun like an old man. But I feel happy then, very happy, to think I that I have done my job for the day, and surely more ideas will be there in the morning for me to continue my work. And if I send them out or not, if I read them or not, that does not matter. What matters is, they are written. And if it was hard work, good, hard work is good, but rather, mostly, it is fun and a great adventure as I launch out with each idea, much like a man in a boat casting off from the side. But it is more the responsibility, the load (not heavy) and the yoke (easy) that you take upon yourself like a willing ox and plod away, plough away, till the earth is turned. That’s about as much as I can say about my work or what I do or how I do it. I don’t look for income, I don’t look for a reward, for recognition or fame. I look for the next idea and the next revelation it brings to me. I look to the pleasure I get out of every moment and the knowledge that I could not find anything else in this world that I enjoyed more, or brought me more of a sense of meaning. I look to a sense of destiny and purpose and a reason why I was born. I find it as surely as the stars that shine and the sun that wakes me up by the ear every day (like a nanny) and pulls my head out from the covers and says: back to work sonny.
Posted on: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 08:49:00 +0000