It is a silver morning like any other. I am at my desk. Then the phone rings, or someone raps at the door. I am deep in the machinery of my wits. Reluctantly I rise, I answer the phone or I open the door. And the thought which I had in hand, or almost in hand, is gone. Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.
It was Mary Oliver's birthday yesterday. Here is an example of an attitude I don't identify with. If this is your attitude toward creativity, then you will aspire to write that kind of poem, with pretty, pseudo-profound ideas. I mean, solitude is good, but maybe the interruption will bring its own stimulus. And who wants certainty?
3 comments:
Oliver's vision reminds me, of course, of Shelley's story about not being able to finish "Kubla Khan" because he was interrupted by a "person from Porlock."
It also reminds me of Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own", with its evocation of a private space needed for creativity.
What you do need, though, for academic writing, I find, is to control the space. My sister-in-law can write in the midst of everyone, because people don't bother her. Yet she throws the dog outside because it won't leave her alone. I need to withdraw from the demands of others--emails, e-workbooks, phone calls--to clear my mind enough to think.
I think I share Leslie's sister-in-law's attitude. I sometimes use James Garner's trick in Support Your Local Sheriff! as an example in my seminars. His jail doesn't have any bars on the windows and no door on the cell. So he just draws a line across the floor and very sternly tells his prisoner not to cross it. The solitude we need for writing is, likewise, not a material contrivance but a social construction. It's about disciplining yourself and those around you to respect the work of writing.
I sometimes say that instead of turning off your phone you should answer it and tell the person who is calling that you're busy. That shows your "writing self" that the rest of you has their back. It can be a nice feeling. But my children tell me that if you're busy you really should just turn off the phone. Nobody expects you to answer if you don't have time to talk. So the times are changing on me there.
Here are some old blogposts on the movie.
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