Roads to Joy

In bright sunshine, our cat lurks beside the table that we’ve strewn with breadcrumbs for the cheeky robin or two that indulge our offerings if laid out on a surface. The garden nook took a fair bit of tidying, but today our lovely neighbour has brought us over two purple pots of chives that we’ll add to the planter to supplement the lonely one there, as we begin to re-create our herb garden outside the kitchen.

With our kitchen functional again, and plans afoot for installing the new veranda which will keep raindrops at bay, we’re beginning to think once more about work. For us, these days, that work usually involves something creative. One of my creative endeavours, of course, is to pursue avenues, or metaphorical roads, that might have the possibility of leading to joy.

And where do I find most of my joy? Well, as far as I can see, it turns out that I find joy mostly in the loss of self during a creative process. On the other hand, as we signed off our very useful assessment process, the other day, my novelist mentor reminded me of an intriguingly witty comment by Dorothy Parker, to the effect that ‘I don’t like writing, but I love having written.’ Every writer must empathise with this sentiment which, alas, is apocryphally attributed to Parker’s caustic wit. As for me, I don’t like editing, very much, but I do love having edited to an assessor’s satisfaction. I rather love the act of writing if it takes me away from everything else. But the really hard job of writing, it seems to me, is going back over one’s deathless prose or poetry and fixing things.

For that conscientious effort, I feel that I need a degree of self-discipline that’s been lacking over these months of upheaval as we’ve watched our new kitchen slowly, and in retrospect inexorably, unfold into the dream we’ve had for it. It’s felt like a never-ending process, and yet, finally, it’s arriving at a finish point. Oh sure, a few finessing bits, not least of which is the replacement of the multi-fuel hob for one that should not leak gas, and a new toughened glass splashback to protect the backboards from getting singed when the hob is working!

But for now, now that our lives are being lived again in a tidier and more functional style, it’s time to settle back down into the writing discipline and produce. That’s not to say that my work, and even revised work, had found favour with the professional assessor who had taken up my novel for consideration. No, there’s a lot of work for me to do to get the characters singing, as it were. That’s for me to grasp and develop again. I think I can fairly look at my novel efforts so far as a reasonable first draft. My assignment now is to hone my craft, and to let the characters reveal themselves and their motivations, without authorial machinations, as it were. This process is all part of the lesson that aspiring writers try to learn in creative writing sessions concerning ‘showing, not telling.’ And I must learn and re-learn this lesson all over again.

In a tidier room, then, with my screens sorted and my comfort zone around me, I mean to set to, steadily and with perseverance and discipline, and get this novel sorted from the beginning. But I also mean to have some joy along the way, and to return to the beginning of this piece, a tidy garden nook has certainly brought us a sense of present, of immanent, and yet also of imminent joy.