The writing life – and the life of faith – are ones of continual exercise. Paul tells Timothy to exercise in God daily (1 Timothy 4:6-10, The Message). No spiritual flabbiness is allowed. For the writer who holds her art as a means of exercising both her talent and faith, the same holds true. She has to exercise. She has to train because it makes her fit “both today and forever.”
That exercise may not produce quality writing, but most writers know the reality. For every ten pieces they write, maybe one will hold some promise. The work on those ten is what leads to the “sudden” ease, as Richard Hugo says, of the eleventh. The writer doesn’t despair when the writing fails to achieve perfection. She continues writing, waiting and hoping that the right words will one day come.
Junot Diaz and Luci Shaw both speak of the reality of the writing life. Diaz says writers don’t write because everything they write comes out golden. He knows the truth of his statement; he spent years working on his second novel. He contemplated quitting. He didn’t. He eventually published an award-winning second novel and continued onward to write and publish a third.
Shaw says to be a writer is to work in a state of readiness. The writer exercises and exercises because she knows that something eventually will come. Shaw says, “I can manufacture neither poems nor spiritual power, but my task is to be on the spot, watching, ready when the breeze picks up.”
She, like Hugo, says that the work – the frustrating, horrible work of not writing well – is not without its rewards. Hugo says the reward is a sudden ease. For Shaw, and for me, the reward is found in the expectant waiting, in the being still and alert to the movement of the Spirit.
The sudden ease of a piece is a short-term joy. It encourages me to keep working, but, more than that, it motivates me to continue exercising my faith and my art. It urges me to purge flabbiness from my life and to focus on a sort of fitness that isn’t merely for today but is for forever.
Want to stay consistent with your artistic endeavors in the new year? Invest in an Emergency Hope Kit. It will keep you going when the work is difficult.
Image: Nadine Heidrich (Creative Commons)
Although some people try to find the science in it, writing is really an art. Which means it’s hard to study precisely, and it’s hard for us to know exactly what we can do to get better at it.
@safety mats I’m not sure I agree with that. Writing is an art, but it can be approached methodically. I’d argue that reading widely, writing a lot, attempting new forms, and asking for criticism and feedback are ways to get better at it.