Over two weeks
had passed since my last post, and I didn’t have the time or the inclination to
post another. I was feeling guilty because, although I’d never committed to a
blog-a-week contract, that had been my unofficial game plan. Two particular
barriers stood in the way of my productivity: 1) I had nothing to say, and 2) I
was getting ready to go out of town and had a million things to do.
Call it fate, serendipity, a
fortunate coincidence. On my trip I acquired a great little book entitled Letters to Alice on first reading Jane
Austen. (See post below.) Fay Weldon wrote it in 1983, but her timeless advice helped me gain
perspective thirty years later. Not far into the book, Weldon addresses two
categories of tormentors that plague writers:
those who stand behind writers and those who stand in front.
Foremost among those who stand behind
is the Muse. The Muse needs no introduction to anyone who has ever dared to dabble
in the creative arts. She is as demanding as she is elusive. She dogs writers, prodding
them to go forward. “Go, go, go!” she shouts, as relentless as an NFL coach in
her insistence they perform. When at last they give in to her goading, she
rewards them by bestowing and withdrawing inspiration with sadistic pleasure.
 |
| Which necessity impedes your writing progress? |
On rare occasions the Muse behaves
herself. She gives writers a really great plot, an intriguing character, a
cutting-edge insight, only to have them attacked by tormentors from the front. Among
those tormentors is the one I’ll call Necessity. Necessity steps in front of writers,
raises her hand traffic-cop style, and shouts, “Stop!” She insists writers cease
or at least interrupt their craft in order to meet the demands of daily living.
To impede their progress, she throws in their paths such tasks as doing
laundry, transporting kids, paying bills. In her own way, Necessity is as devious
as the Muse, imposing stiff fines of guilt on those who fail in these
endeavors.
So what solution does Weldon offer
for overcoming these tormentors? None, I’m afraid. But what she does give, as I
stated above, is perspective. The perspective to realize there will never be
the perfect situation for sitting down to write. There will always be struggles
for great ideas, for the best ways to state them, for enough uninterrupted time
to write them down, for strategies to deal with naysayers. And the good news is
that—in an almost paradoxical way—it is through struggles and through everyday
living, the Muse visits. Or as Weldon so eloquently puts it: “...it is the
battle the writer wages with the real world which provides the energy for
invention.”
