Writing is Easy Work, but Nothing Lasts Forever
From Denis Johnson’s story “Triumph over the Grave” in his book The Largesse of the Sea Maiden:
“Writing. It’s easy work. The equipment isn’t expensive, and you can pursue this occupation anywhere. You make your own hours, mess around the house in your pajamas, listening to jazz recordings and sipping coffee while another day makes its escape. You don’t have to be high-functioning or even, for the most part, functioning at all. If I could drink liquor without being drunk all the time, I’d certainly drink enough to be drunk half the time, and production wouldn’t suffer. Bouts of poverty come along, anxiety, shocking debt, but nothing lasts forever. I’ve gone from rags to riches and back again, and more than once. Whatever happens to you, you put it on a page, work it into a shape, cast it in a light. It’s not much different, really, from filming a parade of clouds across the sky and calling it a movie — although it has to be admitted that the clouds can descend, take you up, carry you to all kinds of places, some of them terrible, and you don’t get back where you came from for years and years.”
I haven’t been writing much lately, but I think about writing all the time. Not in a way that makes me regret the weeks that have passed without opening the draft of the novel, but as an ever-present background, a gentle but insistent reminder of what’s still to be done. I’ve been turning the ideas over in my mind, the way I’ve always done. Summer is drawing to a close, the days are getting shorter, the mornings cooler, and soon I’ll get back to work.