Nothing To Write Home About

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit. :: Aristotle

I want it to be funny.

And soulful. With just the right amount of insight and poignancy without being sappy or tying everything up in a neat little bow. I want it to be honest and provocative and to raise questions. And I want to retain a vulnerability and a child-like curiosity about the cosmos.

In other words, I want my writing to be a blockbuster, laugh 'til you cry, lump-in-your-throat, chart-topping, best-selling epiphany every single time.

I suffer from the delusion that if I just chisel it, whittle it and sandpaper it long enough…that if I rearrange the words and sentences and paragraphs in every possible permutation, I’ll get it right. And that is the death of creativity.

That approach will whip the very life out of any artistic pursuit, and turn it into a scientific endeavor. Instead of dancing like nobody’s watching, I often feel paralyzed by the criticism of the imaginary reader in my head who’s thinking “This is crap!” That voice, of course, is mine. Someone once told me "Fill the balcony in your mind with a standing-room-only crowd of your biggest fans." Why is it that I listen to the handful of jeering hecklers in the cheap seats?

It’s not like I have any shortage of material. Even when I’m not traveling to exotic destinations, I have something to write about every single day. I live in a world that is filled with humor and poignant, mystical moments and lots of joy and plenty of sadness. I am perennially curious, and frequently filled with wonder by things I can’t explain, and skeptical of those who think they can.

When I have an experience I want to recount, a story I want to tell, a feeling I want to convey, I often think in grandiose cinematic terms: a screenplay, complete with storyboard illustrations, lighting diagrams, camera angles and an orchestral soundtrack.

And so I begin to write. Except that I’m not tapping on my computer keys, or putting pen to paper. It’s in my head. And that kind of writing goes nowhere. It's too much trouble for me to actually do it. Or I'm too tired. Or there's not enough time. What!? I've got nothing if not TONS of time right now.

But I want it to be polished…primo…perfect. With just the right amount of alliteration. I’m not talking about grammar or run-on sentences or dangling participles. I want it DO something to the person reading it…whether it’s a eliciting a chuckle, or a sigh, or a memory, or sharing my skewed perspective on things.

And so what it comes down to is what I know already. It’s the dilemma of every artist. If I sit and wait for the muse to grace me with her presence, I might miss dinner. It’s not like Mozart banged out a greatest hit every time he sat down at the piano. And I feel certain that Mr. Van Gogh used up a lot of yellow paint before he before he got those sunflowers just right. In fact, he didn’t sell a single painting while he was alive.

And yet I let my fear of putting anything mundane out there keep me from writing. And perfection can stand in the way of a lot of great art. Someone once said "Art is never completed, just abandoned."

I feel certain that Sir Isaac Newton, the inventor of gravity, would tell you that it’s not every day an apple falls on your head. There’s a lot of hard work and tree shaking and days with no apples.

So even when there’s no tangible payoff, any kind of artistic pursuit has to be a regular discipline. Sitting down at the keyboard...whether it's a computer or a piano, picking up the brush or the camera or the pen. Stepping out on the tight rope and realizing that falling or failing aren't even remote possibilities. I mean...how bad can it really be? If anything, it’s one more lesson in how NOT to do it next time.

And by the way, I've been working on this for about 6 hours and I’m still not happy with it. But I'm gonna walk away. And come back and fiddle with it some more later.

Even when I do not feel like work, I sit down to it just the same. I cannot wait for inspiration, and inspiration at best is a force brought into action by effort.

Igor Stravinsky