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daidoji_giseiI gave M the two fountain pens, and she was really happy to get them. She kept thanking me, and I told her the truth--I had been helped by someone else when I first became interested in fountain pens, and I was just passing that kindness on. Then I joined my staff in trying to make as much stuff in as little time as possible, because the stock on our shelves were starting to look way too thin and I had to spend most of the afternoon in a meeting. (Arg.) As a side issue, my assistant manager and I figured out why our last two batches of Morning Breakfast Cookies have been so weird, and why the cake I baked yesterday failed. (The two have independent causes, we just were brainstorming stuff while running around the bakery.)
Then after the meeting there was still a bunch of stuff needing to be done in the bakery so I didn't get out of there until an hour after I supposed to have left (but hey, I'm on salary so it doesn't matter to anyone but me) and I went home and whined on FB about how I had to do some writing tonight and I was in a bad mood and didn't want to be productive. This elicited a variety of comments, which included (condensed):
Person 1: Alcohol
Me: I can't; alcohol shuts off my ability to write
Person 1: Hemmingway! Booze! Bullfights!
Person 2: Really? Alcohol makes me more creative!
At which point I went all Matsu on person 2, because YES REALLY I AM AWARE OF MY MIND AND ITS CONNECTION TO MY BODY AND I JUST WROTE TWO LINES ABOVE THAT I CAN'T DRINK AND WRITE SO MAYBE YOU SHOULD TAKE ME SERIOUSLY HERE.
I think Person 2 could have gotten away with his doubt if he hadn't brought creativity into it. Heaven as my witness, over the past few years I've begun to think that one can immediately separate the writers from the non-writers not by publishing credits but by the fact that non-writers go on and on about creativity. Writing doesn't take creativity, not in the way non-writers think it does. I have no lack of creativity. I am telling stories to myself in my head, quite literally, all the time. It what I do when I lay in bed waiting to fall asleep, when I'm walking to work, when I'm in the line at the grocery store. I am never bored, because I live in an endless loop of Story. There is always something interesting happening in my head.
What makes me a writer is not that I endlessly spin out stories for myself, but that I sit down and write. Writing is work. Writing is a craft. It takes focus. It takes discipline. (Which is why, I guess, I am so very slow at it, as focus and discipline are exhausting. But I'm not in this fight to lose, and I'm in it for the long haul.)
I know a writer--by which I mean, someone who really writes--who can and does write with a glass of scotch on his desk. His writer!brain is unaffected by alcohol. I envy him, but I cannot imitate him. And I'm getting more and more pissed off at people who tell me I should.
Then after the meeting there was still a bunch of stuff needing to be done in the bakery so I didn't get out of there until an hour after I supposed to have left (but hey, I'm on salary so it doesn't matter to anyone but me) and I went home and whined on FB about how I had to do some writing tonight and I was in a bad mood and didn't want to be productive. This elicited a variety of comments, which included (condensed):
Person 1: Alcohol
Me: I can't; alcohol shuts off my ability to write
Person 1: Hemmingway! Booze! Bullfights!
Person 2: Really? Alcohol makes me more creative!
At which point I went all Matsu on person 2, because YES REALLY I AM AWARE OF MY MIND AND ITS CONNECTION TO MY BODY AND I JUST WROTE TWO LINES ABOVE THAT I CAN'T DRINK AND WRITE SO MAYBE YOU SHOULD TAKE ME SERIOUSLY HERE.
I think Person 2 could have gotten away with his doubt if he hadn't brought creativity into it. Heaven as my witness, over the past few years I've begun to think that one can immediately separate the writers from the non-writers not by publishing credits but by the fact that non-writers go on and on about creativity. Writing doesn't take creativity, not in the way non-writers think it does. I have no lack of creativity. I am telling stories to myself in my head, quite literally, all the time. It what I do when I lay in bed waiting to fall asleep, when I'm walking to work, when I'm in the line at the grocery store. I am never bored, because I live in an endless loop of Story. There is always something interesting happening in my head.
What makes me a writer is not that I endlessly spin out stories for myself, but that I sit down and write. Writing is work. Writing is a craft. It takes focus. It takes discipline. (Which is why, I guess, I am so very slow at it, as focus and discipline are exhausting. But I'm not in this fight to lose, and I'm in it for the long haul.)
I know a writer--by which I mean, someone who really writes--who can and does write with a glass of scotch on his desk. His writer!brain is unaffected by alcohol. I envy him, but I cannot imitate him. And I'm getting more and more pissed off at people who tell me I should.
