The Wonderful Serendipity of the Library Shelf

For one reason or another, I was browsing at one of our local libraries (I might have been working, or just filling in a few minutes) and, not for the first time, became the beneficiary of that wonderful serendipity that swirls about the shelves. After a couple of weeks of being busy with all sorts of work and family issues, a quick browse of the non-fiction shelves put me in temporary possession of a brace of books that carried within their covers both hope and inspiration.

One, small enough to fit in my coat pocket, was What W.H.Auden Can Do For You, by Alexander McCall Smith.  At 137 pages it seems a quick and easy read, but is worth taking time over - a chapter or two each day, followed by some thoughtfullness and gratitude, and perhaps a diversion into the whole poems from which the various excerpts contained in these chapters have been taken.

Gratitude is a theme addressed by so many poets, preachers, and philosphers, from Horace through Marcus Aurelius, and on to Auden himself;  gratitude that often arrives all unexpected, lighting up an  otherwise dark time.

In the final chapter of McCall Smith's book there is a quote from Horace that reminded me just how fortunate I am, and which took me at once out into the garden and wood which I so love, and within which I so often find peace and inspiration........

This is what I had prayed for: a small piece of land
With a garden, a fresh flowing spring of water at hand,
Near the house....
It's perfect.  I ask for nothing else, except to implore,
O Son of Maia, that you make these blessings my own,
For the rest of my life....

Auden wrote something similar only a couple of millenia later, in his "Thanksgiving for a Habitat"....

....I, a transplant.... at last am dominant
Over three acres and a blooming
Conurbation of country lives.......
.....................
What I dared not hope or fight for
is in my fifties, mine, a toft-and-croft
where I needn't, ever, be at home to
those I am not at home with...... 

 Each of us needs a spot we can claim as our own safe place, a place where we need not keep the company would not wish to keep.  We own it, or borrow it; we may be a caretaker, or squatter, or regular visitor - but we need that place we can feel grateful for, in which we can feel gratitude.

We won't be immune from unexpected visitors, but they are more likely, there, to be visitors whose company and conversation we can enjoy.....

Did I say that serendipity had granted me two fascinating tomes from the same shelves?  What of the other, you ask?  How much do you know about Paul Otlet?  No, me neither.  How can it be that none of my teachers or instructors or colleagues ever mentioned this man?  To be continued........

A Yen for Writing

There is advice for writers, and then there are the essays of Ray Bradbury as set out in Zen in the Art of Writing.

Written across three decades and published in 1994, they are at once whimsical and deadly serious - full of, as he puts it, the Zest and Gusto with which every writer should approach her work.  Without zest and gusto, the writer/artist/composer is only half alive - whether the passion of the moment is love or anger, admiration or indignation, by hurling that passion at the page with zest and gusto, the writer will produce something real.

There are shelves in bookshops that groan under the weight of tomes advising the writer on the roads to success, the techniques for perfection, and the rules for marketing the finished product.  Go to the 808s on the library shelf and the same books can be borrowed at no cost.  Each of them is, in the end, the opinion of a writer or editor or literary agent.  Much of the advice they contain may be useful - but only if you have been able to summon up the anger or the joy that will give you the strength - the "Zest and Gusto" - needed to hurl the mingled contents of your memory and imagination at the page.

Bradbury's essays inspire me and make me envious - all at the same moment.  I have written, in fits and starts - for much of my life.  There were short stories and long ones, plays, screen plays, letters, diaries and journals (both personal and official), small town newspapers, business reports, official reports of various sorts, and publicity pieces for local events and organisations  There was plenty to write about, but timidity intervened too often.  I had heard about the Tall Poppy Syndrome, and wanted to keep my head.  My passion did not overpower my sense of self-preservation nearly often enough for my writing to progress to the point of publication.

The passion was there - I could be as angry or as joyful as the next man, but that old fashioned virtue of Restraint held me back.  There is a virtue in holding your counsel close, listening and watching - but there comes a time when you have to hurl back at the world all the words, the sights, the sounds, the joy, and the agony, that you have taken from it.  A time to set it out in a form that suits you, that pleases you, that says it your way - or else let it turn to dust in the silence and darkness, and die with you.

Bradbury uses his essays to offer advice on how to write, but more importantly, he offers lived experience on how and why he wrote and lived, and he does so with passion and humour.  He shows, not tells, why passion and humour are crucial to writing, to art, and to life, and he shows that whatever the art you wish to practice, it is worth practicing - never minding what anyone else thinks of it, but only minding what you yourself have to say.

And he shows that the only way to do something well is to do it - again and again and again - that an author must work until work ceases to be work and becomes relaxation.  Sounds odd, but I am beginning to understand what he means.  It is a philosophy that applies equally to any human endeavour - the athlete, the archer, the painter, the seamstress, the singer, the soldier - all will work (or a better word might be practice) again and again, aiming always to do better now than before.

Inspiration is always waiting in the wings but can do nothing for us until we begin to work.

Strangely enough, the advice at the end of the book seems to be contradicting the advice at the beginning - but it is not. By working, no matter what, we find that the zest and gusto, the passion and enthusiasm, have been there waiting for us to start.  The Muse will not write for us, but will offer us help if we are willing to pick up our pen and start tossing words at the page.  It is a circular process, the more we work, the easier it gets, the easier it gets, the more we want to work - and it stops being "working at a craft" and begins to be practicing our art.

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.......