The writer's harvest comes in winter
Posted by Unknown | Posted in dale wilsey jr , focus , growth , harvest , joan didion , patience , poetry , submission , winter , words , writing | Posted on Tuesday, December 27, 2011
“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at,
what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”
~Joan Didion
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Writing has been a bit of a difficult task for me this past year. It's not that I haven't any material from which to cultivate words and scrawl them across the pages, but every word, it seems, has been stubbornly yanked from stone like a sword. When I finally do come to pull them out, they've become deformed and ugly. Useless. Or, seemingly so.
The words have not ripened. They're still growing within the fields of thoughts sprawling through my mind. I've spent the year gazing over the endless acres of memories. Taking a broad look. Watching the growth. Now, as the year ends and the snows near, it's time to look closer.
Now, I'll look at the pebble and not the mountain. Trace its subtle curves and grooves. I'll gaze into the puddle, not the storm, and watch each drop of rain expand through ripples. Concentrate on the minute and not the hour. It's time to focus in on the details. Harvest my words and prepare them with great care.
Pages turn as I catch up on my reading. Patience sets in while I wait for submission responses. And my pen, my typer and the keys of my laptop begin to chisel away at the granite. It's time to sit before the blank, white expanses of what could be and create. Time to roll up my sleeves like Hamsun's Isak, dig in and bleed.
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I think you're being too hard on yourself. Your writing that I have read this year, has been really, very good. Before I started my novel last December, I hadn't written anything in a year, except for some poetry over the summer. We all have challenging times as writers. You will overcome it.
I still want to read the novel excerpt I missed when I was in Tennessee! When will that happen?
Thank you for the kind words. It has been, at the very least, a challenging year for me all around. I feel I've abandoned that for too long. I must breathe it back to life.