Years ago — I don’t remember where, unfortunately — I read an old Chinese Proverb: “Nobody’s family can hang out the sign, ‘NOTHING THE MATTER HERE.’” I immediately set Owen, who was only 3 at the time, to the task of hand-lettering us a sign that said just that. (I found it in a box and hung it up in my office yesterday.)
“Are you amplified to rock?
Are you hoping for a contact?”
—Guided By Voices, “Hardcore UFOs”
I haven’t written a book in this office yet. Yesterday, my wife hung my guitars and my Guided By Voices poster and then she hung up a blank bulletin board with my father-in-law’s 3 Axioms:
And it’s been nice and wet and cloudy in the mornings:
And it’s starting to feel like it’s time to really get down to business around here.
Count the days that we have wasted from the start
Speak the words and build a playground
In your head
“Imagination is when you close your eyes and think of a door.”
—Dave Hickey
“This is about lack of imagination.”
—Ali Khan, formerly of the C.D.C.
Imagination is simply the ability to make images in your head.
If you’re blessed with an imagination, it’s part of your job to bring better images to the world.
Some wisdom from F.B.I Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks:
I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Everyday, once a day, give yourself a present. Don’t plan it, don’t wait for it. Just let it happen. It could be a new shirt at the Men’s store. A catnap in your office chair. Or two cups of good, hot black coffee.
Filed under: routine
While many writers are turning to the calm of collage as an escape from needing words, Hanif Abdurraqib is turning to self-collage and assembling his leftover scraps into poetry:
[I am] recycling my way toward a feeling of productivity. I copy and paste email responses that work across multiple inquiries. If I don’t feel up for making a morale-boosting lunch, I pile some leftovers into a bowl and hope for the best. I’ve found myself doing this with poems, as well. Piling leftovers onto the page and seeing what makes sense. I don’t throw away drafts of my poems. I keep them all in a folder on my computer. If I cared for something enough to write it, I care for it enough to imagine that it might be useful later.
About once a week, I’ve been digging through my folder of misfit poems and constructing new ones out of them. It’s like a joyful puzzle. The work of writing is already done. The work of arrangement is where the excitement is.
This is a fine method for artists of all kinds. A little hoarding goes a long way. You never know when a discarded scrap from something can be turned into something new. (Keep Going contains a whole section that didn’t fit into Show Your Work!)
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