Life's a Ditch
Writing was especially rough this morning, and I fantasized about being a ditch digger. When a ditch digger has finished a piece of ditch-digging, the ditch has either been dug, or it hasn't. There is no room for debate among reasonable people about whether the resulting hole in the ground is or isn't a ditch.
One of the reasons creative work is such a horrible, demoralizing fucking slog sometimes is that sometimes (most of the time) you dig a ditch and it turns out that you needed a well. But when you're talking about creative work, digging the ditch took a serious psychological ego investment, so not only must a well now be dug, but the ditch digger has to put his ego back together first. Sometimes, one of the only ways to accomplish this is to hold one's head in one's hands and fantasize about how much better it would be if one dug in dirt instead of in ideas.
In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield writes about how having been a marine is one of the most useful life experiences he's had as a creative person, because the most useful skill you learn as a marine is how to be miserable.
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And I've just started reading that venerable tome this week, on the advice of... well, you. What's great about it is not its central theme (any creative work requires discipline, fearlessness, and fortitude -- we've heard that before), but the construction of the book, attacking its villain, Resistance, from every side.
What Pressfield does brilliantly is demonstrate that all-important discipline by continuing to doggedly hunt down Resistance in all its forms, drag it out of its spider hole, and shine a flashlight into its beard.
And, as he points out, you'll be back at work again tomorrow. Ditch or well, there will be a new challenge and you can take comfort in its potential to go more smoothly than today's.
Fucking is only fun for amateurs, right?
If Thompson's to be believed — and yes, he is — then yes.
But here's the really sad thing about the age of the professional amateur that the Internets (sorry) have brought us: Fucking is fun for the amateur, and lucrative for the professional, but the professional amateur isn't having any fun, and he doesn't have any money. At least, that's how it is from where I'm sitting.
Come to Canada... Join us... Get paid real money (well, okay, money with moose and hockey players on it) for fun, fulfilling writing... Look back at Hollywood and wonder why you ever thought it was a good idea...
Having experienced how hard it is for your creative endeavors to fizzle right before your eyes, I'm sure you will have gained some understanding for some church pastors I have known. They begin a 30-40 year career with high hopes of bringing transformative experiences to the people of their congregations. The majority of the time, however, their most creative efforts are, at best, simply not grasped and, at worst, scorned. They can remember all of the people for whom things really clicked partly because there are relatively few of them.
Since life, at its best is a creative process, I suspect you have (will) find the process of parenting to bear some resemblance to script writing (except that you can't just tear up the pages and pretend nothing bad happened).
Some of my pastor friends take refuge in carpentry and cabinet making (their form of dirt) as a kind of therapy - something that rewards their creativity in a concrete and lasting way. Maybe gaming can be that kind of therapy for writers. You can feel rewarded for your creativity even when your character dies.
What if you simply dig a divet? That's not a full-fledged ditch but some digging has been done. One man's ditch could certainly be another man's divet.