| THE
DESERT
Writers -- and cartoonists, by generous extension
of the term -- thrive on, and to some degree are even dependent on, a steady
stream of encouragement. This is especially true of those of us who are
effectively self-employed, and must provide our own motivation not to simply
stay in our underwear all day, watching cartoons. While impending rent or
dwindling groceries can be an effective motivator in the short-term, these
are also the reasons most of us eventually just give up and take retail
positions.
I have this book by Stephen King, "On Writing."
It's a good read, not overly-effective as an instruction manual to the 'craft,'
but bang-on as a textual pep talk. You put that down, you're ready to write
yourself a novel, and kidney-punch anyone who tries to stop you.
(You'll find there aren't a lot of people actively
involved in guerilla anti-literary campaigns, of course, but you'd be ready
if there were.)
The problem with inspiration is that you never
know when it's gonna run out on you. If you're lucky, it'll happen at a point
where you can set your pencil down, go take a walk, come back inside and
find that you're right back on top of things. If you're not lucky -- and
most of us aren't, frequently -- your creative car is gonna run outta gas
in the middle of the desert, right next to a camel's mummified carcass. You
really only have three options when that happens. You can flop over and die.
You can sit in the car, staring at the dead camel, hoping that your car'll
spontaneously start again (which is stretching the analogy a bit, but we
can chalk up the self-regenerating gasoline to heat hallucination). Or you
can get out and push.
If you haven't been there, let me tell you
that pushing your literary car along sucks beyond most measures of suck.
When you're driving along, you're not even writing the sentences, yourself,
you're just scribbling them down as the magic elves in your head throw them
to you. When you're pushing the car, you're pulling individual words out
of deep, black, gooey mud, only knowing if they're appropriate or not once
you've got 'em wiped down. More often than not, it takes several minutes
just to get a sentence on paper under those conditions.
And yes, I realize I just used a metaphor to
explain my metaphor. It's a free country.
Assuming you're reading this in a free country.
So, what was the point of this post? I don't
know. I think I was just complaining. Stay tuned.
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