Basilea Schlink wrote about her sacrifice of years in solitude required so she might write about God. It takes a saint like her to find something good about the writer’s curse.
While writing does relieve certain mental disturbances, it’s also one great kill-joy! I look out the window just now and think how inviting the green hill looks, bathed in full sun, the wind tickling the treetops. How marvelous the view would be on a day like this, actually sitting for hours…looking out and up to the hilltop. Yet, I have a book half done, and it’s only a wasted effort unless I complete it.
I have two terrible choices. Either I can leave the pages boxed away in the storage room and spend the rest of my days hiking, quilting, cooking dinner for friends, and weeding the garden. Or I can sit at this blankety-blank computer and finish the darn thing. The first choice means that I was foolish enough to waste days upon days upon years writing half books for no good reason, a petty self-indulgence. The second choice means I was foolish enough to waste days upon days upon years writing entire books for no good reason, a petty indulgence.
The only difference between the two choices is that if I should be petty and selfish enough to make full books out of half books, I might find an agent, an editor, a publisher, and a reader who will share my folly and make me feel somewhat relieved that I’m not the only petty, selfish person in the world. And that’s not the kind of choice that lets a writer sleep soundly at night.
************************************
THE WRITER’S LIFE