Tanque Verde Ranch , Arizona
Twenty-one years ago, Annie Dillard, one of the most astute writers on writing (and the author of, among other books, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek), published an article titled “Write Till You Drop” in the New York Times in which she wrote:
“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”
How many times have I found that, to my own surprise and chagrin, my knee-jerk reaction to creative opportunity is inertia? Even partial inertia? Even an inertia so small and private that it manifests as a mosquito-like annoyance? Well, small or large, unsettling in its heft or buzzing and small, that paralytic tendency has caused me to hold back, refrain, be stingy, hoard, or otherwise resist giving fully of my ideas, lest the aftermath of giving result in a creative void of epic proportion.
Each of us has a responsibility to look at how creative stinginess or inertia or paralysis affects us. Out of a fear of creative infertility we stave off sharing even half of the creative capital that we come up with, intimidated by the idea that, if we give it, we will have blown our one big wad of currency and that its absence will uncover a generative vacuum that might just gape forever.
This blog, if nothing else, is about taking down my own imagined consequences – the ones that have kept me from exploring everything I have to give. To me, this means finally launching my ideas for grander writing projects and trusting that the consequence will not be a creative desert but rather a fertility so lush that I’ll be overcome by the germination of new ideas. After all, an idea does no one any good if its is held so tightly that it suffocates.
So, let’s aim high, give big, throw armloads of ideas into the air and allow ourselves to be amazed at how many of them stick. You’ll see that, if there are consequences, chances are they are small (and most likely imaginary). Let’s recommit to giving, to sharing theories, to launching the armada of ideas that we all keep close to our respective chests.
It’s time to launch the big ships, and trust that the New World is out there.
Find Dillard’s full article here: http://tinyurl.com/AnnieDillard
or visit
http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/03/28/specials/dillard-drop.html
Puddle Jumping 