Sitting Down on a Wet Afternoon to Write

My books are all organized and stacked on the floor, my chamomile-rooibos-mint blend is brewed up and just slightly too warm to drink, a jazz record that I picked without great discretion or taste is playing from my computer—the mood is conducive to writing. So, let’s write.

But: there’s the laundry to fold, and I’m nearly done with a stack of magazines, I need to shop for a new umbrella, and surely the books could be better organized. The pantry too, for that matter. And it wouldn’t hurt to vacuum. Some of my sweaters need a hand-washing, and that’s not to mention the dishes still in the sink from lunch, wretch that I am.

It’s not that I feel an obligation to do chores—not exactly. That sort of distraction I can push through. After all: writing. But as the words dance for me on the page and the jazz seeps into brain and the chamomile calms my nerves—there’s also the residual effects of two cups of excellent tea I had earlier—I begin to long to do something. I steal glances away from my page—at the unfolded shirts, at the unwashed dishes, and the unsweapt floors. They seem so beguiling in my soaring poetical mood. I am Anna Karenina on the train:

Anna Arkadyevna read and understood; but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised every one by her boldness, she wished to do the same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the smooth paper-knife in her little hands, she forced herself to read.

No chance of doing anything, I repeat dreamily, no chance of doing anything. Yes, it is the same for the writer sometimes. Sometimes the pen does feel rather feeble compared with the sword. No chance of doing anything. But there’s the folding and the washing and the vacuuming I could do. Yes, and it is strangely dazzling to me. The feel of fabric under my hands, the smell of soap in the sink, the sound of the vacuum cleaner gathering dust into its gullet. Yes, yes. Dazzling.

But I chain myself to my desk. Another cup of chamomile, that’s the way. I thumb through my copy of Anna Karenina and look at the pictures. But, I’m writing, I’m writing.

Why write? Why resist this urge to do, to make, to live? It is surely the better urge. Yes, yes—it is the better urge. But I can do it better from my desk.

For it’s like this. The dazzling mood that has hold of me can propel me to fold shirts or organize books or whatever you like. And I will fold those shirt and organize those books just as would as I would have done under some other mood. Oh, but to write under this mood which begs me to leave my desk and live—that leads to literary fireworks I don’t get otherwise.

Yes, we writers sometimes write best when we want to write least. For, though the craft is a glorious thing well worth learning, it can distract us. We can be writing with masterful technique without catching what we’re writing about. The words soar off and make a purely verbal kaleidoscope on their own, which has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with their subject. But when we feel that urge to live, when the whole world is like a starscape of grandeur, well, then we really have something to say.

For this mood is a precious, precious thing. It would not be squandering it to aim it towards the dishes—on the contrary, some of my deepest memories are just the smells, the sounds, the wide-awakeness as I did the dishes. But, my hope is that writing under this mood, some of the mood will stick to my words. And if it does, then perhaps it will make a second leap and stick to my readers. And if that happens, well, wouldn’t that be splendid?