The Edge of Nowhere

So, the trick (re: being "creative", i.e., working) I've found over the years is to just carve out time in the daily schedule somehow every day, every day, even if it's just a half-hour every day, because in my experience the every day effort snowballs and then you want to give it more time, and you'll find more time, an hour, 90 minutes. But it's always the first thing that gets dropped when schedules get tight, because, well, because there's so much else normal life stuff to do.

My problem (in the past) is not that I can work every day for two or three months in a row (because I can), it's that I can't do it for any sustained periods beyond that initial rush, the first draft. That's when I tend to drop the metaphorical cliche ball and sleep in (til 6, instead of getting up at 5 to work) or watch TV late nights when the house is asleep instead of working. Working! I wish I could stay committed to work a little bit every day for 10 months in a row, year after year, rather than these spurts of two or three months in a row one a year, or every other year. That's what kills me. Sustaining it, tho': then I'd have progress. Yeah. You betcha.

And it's stupid that we don't give the time to our avocations every day, because, shoot, after our families, it's what we want to do, it's what we're good at, no matter what it is (writing fiction, making music, painting, collecting baseball cards, playing Risk, doing yoga or running, traveling, whatever it is) because it's what we're here for, right? At least it's what some of us are here for.

The upside of working every day is of course simply huge… in emotional/spiritual/ psychological rewards mainly, not to mention the dreams and visions of one-day financial/fame rewards. So last night after the kids went to bed, instead of working for an hour, I watched the '65 Dylan documentary "Don't Look Back" with the audio commentary on. Nice, good, interesting, fun to watch, insightful on the filmmakers choices, yeah, sure, all of that, but… Why didn't I edit a chapter instead? Why didn't I sit at my laptop and take an hour to make the changes from the five chapters I did paper edit on Saturday and Sunday mornings? I don't know. And then I sit here wasting time complaining about now working, wishing I'd worked instead…. instead of celebrating and bragging on the five chapters I did edit. There's that inner editor again. It's an ugly, ugly head he's rearing.

What did Woody Allen say? Eighty percent of success is just showing up? He's right about that, I think…. He's right about that.

// posted by eba @ 10:41 AM