Words pinned to the wall

Here are some recent additions to my inspiration corner beside my desk.

Here’s a bit from Raymond Carver’s essay, “On Writing”:

Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. Someday I’ll put that on a three-by-five card and tape it to the wall beside my desk. I have some three-by-five cards on the wall now. “Fundamental accuracy of statement is the one sole morality of writing.” Ezra Pound. It is not everything by any means, but if a writer has “fundamental accuracy of statement” going for him, he’s at least on the right track.

I have a three-by-five up there with this fragment of a sentence from a story by Chekhov: “. . . and suddenly everything became clear to him.” I find these words filled with wonder and possibility. I love their simple clarity, and the hint of revelation that’s implied. There is mystery, too. What has been unclear before? Why is it just now becoming clear? What’s happened? Most of all–what now? There are consequences as a result of such sudden awakenings. I feel a sharp sense of relief–and anticipation.

I overheard the writer Geoffrey Wolff say “No cheap tricks” to a group of writing students. That should go on a three-by-five card. I’d amend it a little to “No tricks.” Period.

In Tuesday’s newsletter, we’re sharing words we’ve pinned on the wall.

Raymond Carver loved to quote Isak Dinesen, who said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair.

“Someday,” he wrote, “I’ll put that on a three-by-five-card and tape it to the wall beside my desk.”

I stole his idea for my bliss station:

EVERY DAY, WITHOUT HOPE AND WITHOUT DESPAIR.

His widow, the poet Tess Gallagher, said these words were a “quiet banner of determination” that flew over the last decade of his life.

They are now my banner, and they can also be yours, if you like.

Carver, when asked about the impact he thought his work would have on people, was extremely skeptical about the possibility that his stories and poems would profoundly change the world or save anything in it. Of his art, he said:

It doesn’t have to do anything. It just has to be there for the fierce pleasure we take in doing it, and the different kind of pleasure that’s taken in reading something that’s durable and made to last, as well as beautiful in and of itself. Something that throws off these sparks—a persistent and steady glow, however dim.

That “steady glow, however dim” reminds me of the gospel song we used to sing in Sunday School: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine.” It also reminds me of Edith Wharton: “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” (If you don’t have your own light, you can reflect someone else’s — just don’t be Human Vantablack.)

I, too, am skeptical that my work will actually make any kind of lasting impact. To believe such a thing, when one considers the span of cosmic time, seems downright delusional. And, frankly, I no longer need my work to change anything — I just know I need to do it.

I often think of my favorite line from Groundhog Day: