Habits

"In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration. Consequently there must be some little quality of fierceness until the habit pattern of a certain number of words is established." - an excerpt from Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath in which John Steinbeck recorded his daily struggles as he wrote his Pulitzer Prize winning novel.

Though Steinbeck intended to acheive the production of his Magnum Opus within a certain time-frame, and had declared his desire to write a certain number of words each day, he knew how difficult a task that would be.  He recorded honestly in his journal the successes and the failures - as well as the swings of mood, motivation, and confidence - that anybody, no matter what their creative field, goes through as they push towards their goal.  Maria Popova wrote a detailed and interesting article on Steinbeck's efforts here - https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/02/john-steinbeck-working-days/

How many of us have, at some time or another, tried to keep a journal?  Did you keep it for a specific purpose, like Steinbeck's?  Or perhaps like the journals maintained by so many modern politicians as they prepare to write their own version of history in the  desperate hope of countering the other political memoirs and commentaries that they know will be churned out by their political enemies?

Or, do you try to keep a true and faithful record of your life in all its ups and downs?  It is a risky business, of course - how honest can a person be when recording details of thoughts, actions, feelings, and longings that are otherwise unrevealed to the broader world?  What if your mother reads the journal, or your spouse?  What if your cousins or schoolmates find it, and publish it far and wide for the titillation of all and sundry?  Such abuse of privacy can have a shattering effect upon the creative impulse, whether it happens to a child or an adult.

There have been some remarkable journal-writers - Anais Nin, Virginia Woolf, and Henry David Thoreau come to mind - and some less so - which brings to mind the published efforts of some of our more recent Prime Ministers.

For a writer, the purpose can be to keep track of our thoughts, to shape them, and to seek some clarity in the muddle of ideas and impulses that can overwhelm us all to easily - fame and publication are a distant dream (or nightmare).  And, importantly, keeping a journal can be the first small habit of daily writing that will help us build and cement the habit of perservering at the larger creative tasks that we hope to perform.

There are days when the only writing I achieve is an entry in my journal.  Sometimes that can be quite a brief summary of events, or it can stretch out to a prolonged meditation, but it happens daily, and that is important. The keeping of a daily journal is something I have attempted during several periods of my life, beginning in my teens - but, for various reasons, I have only been consistent for the last decade and a half.

Yet, without that habit, that commitment, there could easily be days or even weeks when no writing would be done at all - the task of writing can become like the task of putting in order that pile of receipts and business papers that have been building from a week's postponement to a month, and then a year.  When mood or circumstance make the task of creatively writing seem too large to contemplate, let alone attempt, the smaller habit of the journal can save me from complete failure.

Once the pen is between my fingers, and the ink has begun to flow, the mind is given over to writing - and, even if that writing is mainly about failure, fear, distractions, and annoyances, there is only a tiny gap between the neurons telling that sad tale, and the ones that, yesterday, wrote a chapter that sparkled.

Those fears, or failures, may yet become the stuff of some future masterpiece - those distractions and annoyances could move beyond the pages of the journal to the broader stage of a poem, essay, or novel - or, at least, a Facebook post or blog entry.  Now that some of my own distractions have gathered up their surviving Easter eggs, toys, ipads, shoes, and sleeping bags, and have departed for warmer climes, I can consider whether there may yet be a place for them in some current or future literary endeavour - and what sort of place that might be.  Meanwhile, as Frodo said, the road goes ever on.......