My work, in progress
I knew today would come, but hoped in spite of its inevitability that I might somehow put it off for a month or two, or three and a half.
I remember, in my last years of high school, being given an assignment as part of my English class; I had to write, each day, some amount that might have been two hundred and fifty words, might have been more, or less. I remember laughing to myself at the beginning, writing the first journal easily in twenty minutes, amazed that it was even considered homework. The second was hardly any more difficult. I wrote fiction, I think, being as I was a budding author in the making, overcome with inspiration and eager to embrace a change to let it all out.
That might have lasted all of a week.
Then, I think, I devolved into writing about my day, to musing about useless things, to analyzing songs or the shortest newspaper articles I could find, or writing letters to friends … and a month in, realised that my teacher had tricked us all, had implemented a highly advanced form of torture and was probably planning on takinIg over the world. A writer I may have been, in the abstract or idealized conception of the notion, but I quickly learned that I’d been living a sheltered life as far as writing was concerned. Writing when inspiration hit was one thing, laughably simple. Writing every day, rain or shine, in the face of fatigue or Physics homework was an entirely different matter; it was unglamorous, it was unsatisfying … it was hard.
Two hundred and fifty words (which I’ve only just reached) don’t just come from nowhere. Part of being a writer, I am beginning to realise, is learning where they do originate. It’s learning what can serve as inspiration and then, more importantly, learning where to turn within yourself when that inspiration misses its bus and doesn’t show up for work today. It was a lesson I didn’t really learn back then, one that in reality I only barely began to grasp before I learned how to cheat my way around the assignment, but it’s coming back to me today.
Nothing really happened today, you see. My bus was late, but I am beginning to accept that as a fact of my existence, like overcrowded shopping centers or unwarranted friendliness from Ottawa strangers. Work still perplexes me, still lacks anything onto which I can latch on and in light of which I can draw significance. I spent almost the entirety of my day reading a single report, a transcript of a meeting whose purpose I did not understand until I was forty pages, two thirds of the way through it.
A brief sojourn out of the office with Dee was a breath of fresh air, literally: a drive around the city to see the tulips before stopping off at a second hand clothes store, because A apparently still worries about my ability to dress myself, and doesn’t realise that I can do better than $40 skirts that look like they have been previously worn by someone’s grandmother.
I’m being uncharitable.
The trip prompted no musings, though, nothing particularly noteworthy except the fact that I saw a duck (mallard) and certainly nothing poignant enough to break through my comfortable post-work haze.
Still, I said that I would write daily, and I’m loathe to break my commitment to myself so early in this venture, which means that I think I’ve got some soul-searching to do. Today solved itself, allowing me to fight the problem by simply referring to it for five hundred words and thus satisfy my requirement for a journal entry, but I’m no longer blind to the greater challenge behind it. This won’t be the only dead day I have, I’m sure. Somehow, I’ll have to find a way to get through them -- without resorting, as I once did, to translating foreign language songs into English and pretending it involved some sort of creativity.
Alas, no answer immediately presents itself ... though suggestions wouldn't be unwelcome!
I remember, in my last years of high school, being given an assignment as part of my English class; I had to write, each day, some amount that might have been two hundred and fifty words, might have been more, or less. I remember laughing to myself at the beginning, writing the first journal easily in twenty minutes, amazed that it was even considered homework. The second was hardly any more difficult. I wrote fiction, I think, being as I was a budding author in the making, overcome with inspiration and eager to embrace a change to let it all out.
That might have lasted all of a week.
Then, I think, I devolved into writing about my day, to musing about useless things, to analyzing songs or the shortest newspaper articles I could find, or writing letters to friends … and a month in, realised that my teacher had tricked us all, had implemented a highly advanced form of torture and was probably planning on takinIg over the world. A writer I may have been, in the abstract or idealized conception of the notion, but I quickly learned that I’d been living a sheltered life as far as writing was concerned. Writing when inspiration hit was one thing, laughably simple. Writing every day, rain or shine, in the face of fatigue or Physics homework was an entirely different matter; it was unglamorous, it was unsatisfying … it was hard.
Two hundred and fifty words (which I’ve only just reached) don’t just come from nowhere. Part of being a writer, I am beginning to realise, is learning where they do originate. It’s learning what can serve as inspiration and then, more importantly, learning where to turn within yourself when that inspiration misses its bus and doesn’t show up for work today. It was a lesson I didn’t really learn back then, one that in reality I only barely began to grasp before I learned how to cheat my way around the assignment, but it’s coming back to me today.
Nothing really happened today, you see. My bus was late, but I am beginning to accept that as a fact of my existence, like overcrowded shopping centers or unwarranted friendliness from Ottawa strangers. Work still perplexes me, still lacks anything onto which I can latch on and in light of which I can draw significance. I spent almost the entirety of my day reading a single report, a transcript of a meeting whose purpose I did not understand until I was forty pages, two thirds of the way through it.
A brief sojourn out of the office with Dee was a breath of fresh air, literally: a drive around the city to see the tulips before stopping off at a second hand clothes store, because A apparently still worries about my ability to dress myself, and doesn’t realise that I can do better than $40 skirts that look like they have been previously worn by someone’s grandmother.
I’m being uncharitable.
The trip prompted no musings, though, nothing particularly noteworthy except the fact that I saw a duck (mallard) and certainly nothing poignant enough to break through my comfortable post-work haze.
Still, I said that I would write daily, and I’m loathe to break my commitment to myself so early in this venture, which means that I think I’ve got some soul-searching to do. Today solved itself, allowing me to fight the problem by simply referring to it for five hundred words and thus satisfy my requirement for a journal entry, but I’m no longer blind to the greater challenge behind it. This won’t be the only dead day I have, I’m sure. Somehow, I’ll have to find a way to get through them -- without resorting, as I once did, to translating foreign language songs into English and pretending it involved some sort of creativity.
Alas, no answer immediately presents itself ... though suggestions wouldn't be unwelcome!