A Writers Motivation
I have recently taken up the lifestyle of the professional runner. I get up each morning, run for 40 minutes, then go to work, come home, run for another hour and a half, eat, read, sleep and go to bed, over and over, seven days a week. Each time I get better at it and soon I will run a big race when I will do pretty well. Running is great like this. Everyone thinks I’m amazing. I get medals and applause. People aspire to do what I do.
For five years now I have spent hours and hours of every day writing. Each I’d do a little more and each day I’d think that I’d done a little better. Then I’d go to bed, happy with myself and think I’d added to what was certain to be a masterpiece, when finished, which I’d be delighted with and which everyone would love.
Then I’d finish the work, after years and years of effort. No-one would care. People would read the first chapter and then not continue. They’d be too busy, find it all a bit weird. Then I’d read it again and decide that I didn’t like it anymore. I’d end up putting it to one side, telling myself I’d look at it again in a few months and then begin work on something else, another work that would be great and that everyone would love to read. Then the same thing would happen again.
Why? What is the point? Why do I do it? What is the point of writing? Why do I work at it, why do I struggle? Why don’t I just stick with running – collect my medals, enjoy the acclamation, smile when my friends and family look on and cheer? It’s so much easier than writing a book, let me tell you. It also makes me happy, relieves stress and you never know, one day might give me a place in the history books. It is everything I write for but in a much more accessible form.
Yet here I am, at the end of another 15 mile day, and all I want to do is write. What Is wrong with me?
The answer lies in the power of creativity.
While running gives me pleasure no doubt about it, and being successful gives me a sense of achievement and purpose, it is nothing compared to the possibility of getting something you have written placed into the canon of literature.
What is a simple truth about the world and our civilization, is that it all comes from creative ideas. Things haven’t just existed, haven’t come from nowhere – all of it, everything we do, has stemmed from an idea.
Of course we all have ideas every day, but most of them float into a cloud of memories and then disappear into an ethereal haze. Ideas do not exist until they have been placed somewhere tangible – a piece of paper, a canvas, a computer screen, wherever – but when they are there, they have the potential to be anything. They just need to find the correct form If you want to write an idea it needs to be done in a way that people will want to read and understand. You cannot present something in a scrawl on a wall, or a note on your facebook page. For ideas to have power, the form must enable them to stay in the consciousness - music, a film, graffiti, a blog or a novel. I choose the latter because I feel it provides the best canvas, where you can express your ideas most coherently and comprehensively.
The rewards for creating a work of art are thus different to running in a race, or making lots of money or inventing a hoover. You are adding to the fabric of our culture, to what it means to be human. This is something that money can never do - the artist is aiming to greater heights.
Human civilization is a constantly evolving entity, but it does exist - it is what we ARE, it is what we have achieved as a race. If aliens were to invade tomorrow we would present it to them as a scrapbook of it - an opera by Wagner, a painting by Van Gogh, a play by Shakespeare, and maybe, just maybe, in a tiny way, a piece of work by Benjamin Evans. That is the reward for the artist - an etching on that great slate of cultural history - and it is something that other pursuits cannot even dream to aspire. Scientific theories come and go - they are right, then they are wrong, they elicit more and more hypotheses as they go – but they don’t stay with us like Dickens or Milton. Technology can be all the rage one day but then the next it will be out of date. However the artist, the great artist, will never be torn up and discarded into the void of history or the haze of memory, because the artist deals with what it is to be human, and this something that will never be anachronistic, that can never be out of date or right or wrong.
We write or paint because we think we have something to say to the world - we are able to abstract the human condition in a way that we think is original, or different, or important. This is why I strive to be good, or at least a better writer, because maybe one day people will listen to what I say, read on until the end, tell their friends, let them read as well, think about what I have to say and perhaps change what they think and how they see the world. In turn maybe this will change how we, the human consciousness, culture, view ourselves, thus leaving my writing as a part of the great cultural entity that will exist into as long as the human race prevails.
It is not easy. It takes a lot of hard work. It is very likely that I will fail, but the motivation will never leave me – but the rewards are too great not to have a go. I'll keep running as well, but this will never mean as much to me as writing. For all the sense of achievement, for all the congratulations and slaps on the back, it is nothing compared to the chance of immortality.
For five years now I have spent hours and hours of every day writing. Each I’d do a little more and each day I’d think that I’d done a little better. Then I’d go to bed, happy with myself and think I’d added to what was certain to be a masterpiece, when finished, which I’d be delighted with and which everyone would love.
Then I’d finish the work, after years and years of effort. No-one would care. People would read the first chapter and then not continue. They’d be too busy, find it all a bit weird. Then I’d read it again and decide that I didn’t like it anymore. I’d end up putting it to one side, telling myself I’d look at it again in a few months and then begin work on something else, another work that would be great and that everyone would love to read. Then the same thing would happen again.
Why? What is the point? Why do I do it? What is the point of writing? Why do I work at it, why do I struggle? Why don’t I just stick with running – collect my medals, enjoy the acclamation, smile when my friends and family look on and cheer? It’s so much easier than writing a book, let me tell you. It also makes me happy, relieves stress and you never know, one day might give me a place in the history books. It is everything I write for but in a much more accessible form.
Yet here I am, at the end of another 15 mile day, and all I want to do is write. What Is wrong with me?
The answer lies in the power of creativity.
While running gives me pleasure no doubt about it, and being successful gives me a sense of achievement and purpose, it is nothing compared to the possibility of getting something you have written placed into the canon of literature.
What is a simple truth about the world and our civilization, is that it all comes from creative ideas. Things haven’t just existed, haven’t come from nowhere – all of it, everything we do, has stemmed from an idea.
Of course we all have ideas every day, but most of them float into a cloud of memories and then disappear into an ethereal haze. Ideas do not exist until they have been placed somewhere tangible – a piece of paper, a canvas, a computer screen, wherever – but when they are there, they have the potential to be anything. They just need to find the correct form If you want to write an idea it needs to be done in a way that people will want to read and understand. You cannot present something in a scrawl on a wall, or a note on your facebook page. For ideas to have power, the form must enable them to stay in the consciousness - music, a film, graffiti, a blog or a novel. I choose the latter because I feel it provides the best canvas, where you can express your ideas most coherently and comprehensively.
The rewards for creating a work of art are thus different to running in a race, or making lots of money or inventing a hoover. You are adding to the fabric of our culture, to what it means to be human. This is something that money can never do - the artist is aiming to greater heights.
Human civilization is a constantly evolving entity, but it does exist - it is what we ARE, it is what we have achieved as a race. If aliens were to invade tomorrow we would present it to them as a scrapbook of it - an opera by Wagner, a painting by Van Gogh, a play by Shakespeare, and maybe, just maybe, in a tiny way, a piece of work by Benjamin Evans. That is the reward for the artist - an etching on that great slate of cultural history - and it is something that other pursuits cannot even dream to aspire. Scientific theories come and go - they are right, then they are wrong, they elicit more and more hypotheses as they go – but they don’t stay with us like Dickens or Milton. Technology can be all the rage one day but then the next it will be out of date. However the artist, the great artist, will never be torn up and discarded into the void of history or the haze of memory, because the artist deals with what it is to be human, and this something that will never be anachronistic, that can never be out of date or right or wrong.
We write or paint because we think we have something to say to the world - we are able to abstract the human condition in a way that we think is original, or different, or important. This is why I strive to be good, or at least a better writer, because maybe one day people will listen to what I say, read on until the end, tell their friends, let them read as well, think about what I have to say and perhaps change what they think and how they see the world. In turn maybe this will change how we, the human consciousness, culture, view ourselves, thus leaving my writing as a part of the great cultural entity that will exist into as long as the human race prevails.
It is not easy. It takes a lot of hard work. It is very likely that I will fail, but the motivation will never leave me – but the rewards are too great not to have a go. I'll keep running as well, but this will never mean as much to me as writing. For all the sense of achievement, for all the congratulations and slaps on the back, it is nothing compared to the chance of immortality.
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