Writing can be a passion in the abstract but a phantom in reality. I love to write, you might say. Perhaps your mantra is “I must write to be a whole person.” Whatever your ideal of writing, we must all put it into practice. This blog article is a reality because I’ve applied my fingers to my keyboard. It’s a bit of a miracle to create something where there was just an idea and a passion moments earlier.
We all must recognize that writing requires protection, however. To make progress on anything you’ll want to protect the time you need to achieve and finish it. My writing workshop is getting a new table for students this spring. The floors were transformed in our renovation, and now it’s time for the writing table to get a revival, too. To create this table my carpenter-friend Steve and I must estimate the time we’ll need to bring the table from a desire to something you can lean against with your forearms, hands on keyboard or pen scratching upon a notebook.
“How long will it take?” I ask him this morning, after our weekly Mexican breakfast.
“Not more than a day.”
“Eight hours then?”
“Easily that.” He’s from Liverpool, and they talk in that voice.
“So, we can do this on a Sunday. Which one?”
We’re building a table, but now it’s really going to happen, because the Sunday of March 1 has been protected. In the same way, a novel or an essay collection or a memoir moves from passion to reality. What it requires is for you to protect the time needed to create it. More