The Writer Needs to Swim Upstream

I was reading some of Wallace Stegner's thoughts on writing this morning and came across this: "...talent is very common. It's as common as salmon eggs. And for the same reasons that millions of salmon eggs produce only a few salmon, millions of talents, through bad luck, ill health, poverty, bad social conditions, all sorts of causes, simply never come to anything...". From Literary by Accident.

This reminded me of what I find so frustrating in the writing group. I see writers with talent who have the capacity to succeed as writers, and the cause of their failure isn't any of the things that Stegner lists. It's lack of discipline (myself included), laziness (myself included), and poor boundaries (when it comes to putting your own needs first - myself included). I'll oversimplify the matter of motivation by stating that if you are really a writer, you write. If you are a serious writer with aspirations, you write every day, improving your craft and staying in the zone. If writing is a river, you're not a minnow. You need to be cruising the currents as a big, wily trout.

Wallace Stegner also wrote that a writer lives within a cultural matrix. Create your own writing matrix by first placing your ass in your chair. From that vantage point, enter your brain by whatever ritual suits you best, and create something on the page.

Don't end up being like the majority of the salmon.

She's only three but she sits down and types

Saturday Doldrums

I tried to do a good thing last night and offered to sleep with the resident three-year-old on the futon. Her mother is pretty sick and looked like she could use a good night's sleep. The result was that the child got about 5 hours sleep, I got less, and her mother said she was awake most of the night anyway.
Sleep deprivation is never good, but I was dragging like I haven't drug in a long time when I had to get up with said child at 5:30 in the A.M. Steve had a fishing date and was leaving early, and I couldn't talk him into taking her with him to enjoy nature and all that. The good part is that I got a lot of pesky little jobs done around the house before I completely wore out. (I'm hoping that moving the suitcases from one room to another counts as a completed job)

I was fussing around the yard today and noticed the spiders are making those little egg nests all over the place. Could this mean an early fall? Our persistent heat wave may finally be broken next week, and there's even a possibility of rain. I can barely water enough to keep the plants alive, much less make any improvements. I was watering this evening and saw a sphinx moth on the Jupiter's Beard. These moths are often mistaken for hummingbirds.

My main accomplishments today were the preparation of dinner and an afternoon nap. I don't think I'll offer to sleep with the kid tonight. (It sounded so easy)

I started reading my new Wallace Stegner book on the American West today while eating lunch. I love his writing.

As the sun sets and the temperature drops a little bit, I find that I feel very much like taking a shower and climbing into bed with my book. I need some of those noise-cancelling headphones to complete my fantasy.

I hope that whoever reads this had a good Saturday that was just to their liking. May Sunday be even better.

Yay, Sleep!

Bring it on.