In Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, we are told to always nurture the “inner artist.” The inner artist is the same as an inner child, if the inner child grew up without getting its way all the time and therefore began listening to all of the Rage Against the Machine albums that its parents had purchased for it whenever it had asked.
That’s not really fair to say. But that’s exactly the kind of surliness found on my path to getting some work done. I write, it’s my work. I get paid for some of it, but the kind that costs the most compensates me with nothing more than darkness, warmth, a dull lamp and the Pilot PhD pen I’ve been using to write fiction with since my senior year in college.
But, see, that’s exactly the kind of whining that keeps me from writing. That’s more toward the end of the path before I actually arrive at doing some work. That’s what Louis CK calls a “non-contributing zero.” I fiddle around at 5:30 a.m., and by fiddle around I mean press snooze a lot, then I finally get coffee and sit in my recliner to write. I’ve made it my ritual to write in my journal first, apparently to get “warmed up” aka “waste time” before I write fiction. But it works most of the time.
If I were to ever get a doctoral degree in Psychology, I would most likely specialize in “micro-decisions.” Then the thesis committee would ask, “Can you narrow it down to something smaller?” The bottom line is, I wish I could capture the very moment, a still shot of my brain synapses, when I make a decision that propels me toward my goal. If I could do that, I would go to that exact place every time so I move from non-contributing zero to non-inhibiting hero. That’s all the poetry you’re going to get.
There’s only one problem. Life is fluid. Thoughts are fluid. Ideas are fluid. Our brains are fluid. Literally. I think there’s a certain percentage. But you can never relive the past and now we’ve gotten somewhere – I’ve gotten to the place where I can write. Because the fact that I can’t relive the past and the conviction–quandary, rather–that I’m creating my own future kicks in my fight or flight. And I choose to fight. Choose.
Nobody’s holding my hand. Nobody feels sorry for me because I’ve “just got all this passion inside” and I’m trying to express it. It doesn’t matter until I make it matter. And that’s how I write. And ultimately–because if there’s one thing no one will ever accuse the Burt family of, it’s lacking work ethic–I don’t freeze-frame a chemical reaction in my mind. It’s not possible. I don’t invoke the muse. She is beautiful and romantic, but a beacon of co-dependency. I sit down, click my pen, place the point on the paper and start moving the damned thing. And no matter where my characters are, or what landscape I left off with, or whatever the point of my entire novel is, as if I know, that place in myself that I know I can control takes over and reminds me that I can be my true self whenever I choose. And no matter how much money the words on the page can potentially make, the whole thing becomes necessary.
