Oh, I'm making my deadlines. Ideas are coming. I'm solving problems when I need to. I've jotted capsule outlines for eighteen of probably fifty scenes.
The problem is, I've gotten so engaged with the world of the novel, I don't much care to live anywhere else. Which is discouraging, because I've got a wife and a six year old daughter, and a condo in Arizona I'm trying to sell, and a Dodge pickup I'm trying to sell, and a day job as president of Perelandra College. And a crucial election is coming next week. And somebody trashed the U.S. economy, which isn't helping me sell the Dodge or the condo.
Maybe all that put together is why I'm thinking about Olga, and why it seems to me that anybody who might read this blog any time in the near future would do well to consider Olga.
Beware, a digression (from Writing and the Spirit): The vows of the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s order, are “poverty, chastity, obedience and wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.” The order also has lay members who take the same vow. In their case it means living modestly, reserving sex for marriage, following the guidance of a mentor, and serving the poor wherever and whenever feasible.
As artists, we’ll be lots healthier if we think of ourselves as having taken a vow to cheerfully accept poverty if that’s all the wealth we’re given (and to share the wealth if we get financially blessed); to be chaste in our artistic vision (not be seduced by the commercial or trendy); and to be obedient to the inspiration of the spirit that moves us. If we live in such ways, our art will be of service.
My first class in graduate school at the University of Iowa was with John Irving. I remember an admonition he gave about money. He suggested that serious fiction writers should take an attitude like poets do, conceding that they’re never going to make a living with their art and they need to support themselves some other way.
A couple years later, with The World According to Garp, Irving made a fortune. Which poses a problem for writers like me.
Sensible poets accept that writing poems alone won’t support them, since hardly any poets make a living that way. But more than a few fiction writers make heaps of money, so even the sensible among us may hope to cash in.
My friend Alan Russell and I were on a radio show with Tess Gerritsen, who turned from medicine to writing thrillers. Offstage, Alan asked Tess if she ever regretted giving up doctoring. She said, “Well, you can make more money writing.”
I choked on my gum.
Return to thinking of Olga: My friend Olga was a poet. This past week, while thinking about her, I've decided that asking myself What would Olga do? makes way more sense than asking that mind boggling question What would Jesus do? Because Olga was human, like me, only better at it.
The problem is, I've gotten so engaged with the world of the novel, I don't much care to live anywhere else. Which is discouraging, because I've got a wife and a six year old daughter, and a condo in Arizona I'm trying to sell, and a Dodge pickup I'm trying to sell, and a day job as president of Perelandra College. And a crucial election is coming next week. And somebody trashed the U.S. economy, which isn't helping me sell the Dodge or the condo.
Maybe all that put together is why I'm thinking about Olga, and why it seems to me that anybody who might read this blog any time in the near future would do well to consider Olga.
Beware, a digression (from Writing and the Spirit): The vows of the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s order, are “poverty, chastity, obedience and wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.” The order also has lay members who take the same vow. In their case it means living modestly, reserving sex for marriage, following the guidance of a mentor, and serving the poor wherever and whenever feasible.
As artists, we’ll be lots healthier if we think of ourselves as having taken a vow to cheerfully accept poverty if that’s all the wealth we’re given (and to share the wealth if we get financially blessed); to be chaste in our artistic vision (not be seduced by the commercial or trendy); and to be obedient to the inspiration of the spirit that moves us. If we live in such ways, our art will be of service.
My first class in graduate school at the University of Iowa was with John Irving. I remember an admonition he gave about money. He suggested that serious fiction writers should take an attitude like poets do, conceding that they’re never going to make a living with their art and they need to support themselves some other way.
A couple years later, with The World According to Garp, Irving made a fortune. Which poses a problem for writers like me.
Sensible poets accept that writing poems alone won’t support them, since hardly any poets make a living that way. But more than a few fiction writers make heaps of money, so even the sensible among us may hope to cash in.
My friend Alan Russell and I were on a radio show with Tess Gerritsen, who turned from medicine to writing thrillers. Offstage, Alan asked Tess if she ever regretted giving up doctoring. She said, “Well, you can make more money writing.”
I choked on my gum.
Return to thinking of Olga: My friend Olga was a poet. This past week, while thinking about her, I've decided that asking myself What would Olga do? makes way more sense than asking that mind boggling question What would Jesus do? Because Olga was human, like me, only better at it.
The cliffhanger: For more about Olga, come back next time.
1 comment:
It is wonderful to be reminded of Olga so close to All Saint's Day. I'm having a similar problem with focus. I'm playing on Facebook instead of finishing my novel (or writing more poems or submitting more poems or...). Let's make bracelets that say "W.W.O.D." If I disappear for a while it's because I start teaching TOMORROW.
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