“If you see a person walking along engaged in a vigorous conversation with no one else around, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s escaped from the nearest asylum.  It could be me talking to myself.  But don’t be concerned, don’t interrupt me, don’t bother me at all — I’m writing.

It’s been about fifteen years since I gave up the keyboard and took up a recorder for my first drafts.  Since that time, I’ve dictated nearly fifty novels on an innumerable number of microcassettes, speaking the words aloud, rather than typing them into my word processor.”

– Kevin J. Anderson, Talking to Myself, https://kjablog.com/dictating-writing-hiking/

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“In the low bookcase beside my blue chair, where I sit watching sports, I have secreted a Sony dictator. Every night at 7:30 I fit myself to the TV’s sound by way of an earplug, pick up the day’s mail, and address myself to friends. To Paul Minnie Avenue in Santa Cruz, I say “Dear Adrienne …” I average five thousand letters and postcards every year. Once when the mailman was late I bit his leg.”

– Donald Hall, Life Work

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What is the difference between writing and talking?

Or more precisely, writing with our speech or our hands?

Do our index finger and thumb make a better tool for composition than our vocal chords?

Because they are both tools for writing, not the originators of ideas and sentences.

The writing is done in our minds.

I can write a sentence without it appearing in the physical world.

That is a risky business, as there is a high likelihood of loosing the words forever.

How do they find themselves onto your screen to read?

I can tap away at a keyboard or a phone screen.

But I can just as easily talk them into existence.

And I am beyond a dictaphone.

Mine is more like a transcribaphone.

I can talk and an app converts speech into text.

I can copy and paste straight into this blog.

Talking words feels informal and free.

Another option to reach my daily publishing target.

The same words, different tools.

“A biography is always constructed from ruins but, as any archaeologist will tell you, there is never the means to unearth all the rooms, or follow the buried roads, or dig into every cistern for treasure. You try to see what the ruin meant to whoever inhabited it and, if you are lucky, you see a little way backward into time.”

– Loren Eiseley, All the Strange Hours

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“Autobiography is a poorly named genre. After all, when we tell stories about ourselves, we’re speaking not of who we are but of who we have been, somebody we once were, one who no longer exists except in memory, that mental function more attractive to errors, distortions, and fantasies than the myths of the American West or Sasquatch or cavity probes by aliens.”

– William Least Heat-Moon, Writing Blue Highways

__________

Who am I?

Can you tell by these fragments that I write every day?

Are they honest, true to myself?

Do I even know the answer?

Perhaps writing is an attempt at getting a clearer picture.

To put together the stories of myself through the books I have read.

Am I hiding behind these quotations?

Or can others’ stories help tell my own?

I’m pretty sure there is no definitive answer to any of the questions I have about myself.

But I keep asking away.

What else is there to do?

“reculer pour mieux sauter”

 (to draw back in order to make a better jump)

– My Dad (quoting a well used French phrase)

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“Come and see us, Poppa, when you can
There’ll always be a place for my old man
Just drop by when it’s convenient to
Be sure and call before you do
So long Dad”

– Randy Newman, So Long Dad

__________

Today would have been my dad’s 80th birthday.

I have very little written in his own hand.

One exception is a scrap of paper.

Handwritten, a phrase in french:

“reculer pour mieux”

A rough English translation:

It is better to withdraw before the jump.

There is evidence the phrase has been used in a military context, to make a strategic withdrawal to better attack another time.

I don’t remember why dad chose to write this down, whether it was shared with me, or if I found it among his personal effects.

But it feels like it was written for me.

I have spent a lifetime withdrawing.

I have ignored my creative urges and pulled back from stepping forward, with pen in hand, to write.

Since 1st January 2024, however, I have been jumping forward every day, on this blog.

I see no reason to stop.

Thanks for the wisdom dad.

I’m sorry you never got to see me deploy the jump.

So Long.

Your work is never done.

Love,

Your Son.

“Absorbedness is the paradise of work, but what is its provenance or etiology? Surely it is an ecstasy of transport, of loss of ego; but it is also something less transcendent: To work is to please the powerful masters who are parents—who are family, who are church, who are custom or culture. Not to work is to violate the contract or to disobey the injunction, and to displease the dispensers of supper and love, of praise’s reward. Not working becomes conviction of unworthiness. We prove ourselves worthy by the numbers of work.”

– Donald Hall, Life Work

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“The purpose of each person’s life is not just self-gratification. It has a much larger moral purpose, but by this is not meant some narrow-minded Victorian social restraint. A person should contribute to the quality of the world.”

Robert M. Pirsig, On Quality: an Inquiry Into Excellence

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We all must work.

Is it realistic to expect ourselves to always be doing quality work?

How do we define what the right work is?

Work doesn’t have one definition.

There is work we do for others.

But the most precious work is that done for ourselves.

I suppose there are the fortunate ones who through their own work, are recognised and rewarded by others.

Is the promise of a reward the motivation for the work?

Or is absorbedness in the task at hand the true reward?

If that is so, then those of us labouring away on an anonymous blog can experience the same thrill and meaning than the greatest of literary masters.

It is not the clapping of hands that are proof of good work.

But our own sense of a job well done.

“Creative thinking begins with great questions, not answers. Creative thinkers stay with the question instead of rushing to find an immediate solution. They ask more questions than the average person and are comfortable in the often uncomfortable situation of not immediately having the answer.”

– Elaine Dundon, The Seeds of Innovation: Cultivating the Synergy That Fosters New Ideas

__________

“Question what you read and hear, question deeply and continually. Don’t accept anything because other people believe it, or because it’s expressed prettily, or because it’s been around for twenty or two hundred or two thousand years. And by all means, question this, too. But go all the way with your questioning: Question your own conclusions, your own judgments, and your own answers. Look at your own beliefs, your own prejudices, your own opinions—and see them for what they are.”

– Brad Warner, Hardcore Zen: Punk Rock, Monster Movies and the Truth About Reality

__________

Are there ever enough answers?

Do we arrive at a final one?

As we are all unique, in terms of interests and personality, then perhaps we cannot accept the answers meant for another.

Like a 5 year old asking “why?!”, we know when we have more questions to ask.

They could be directed to a person, a book, a deity, ourselves.

But it’s important to keep at it.

It’s a scary thought to believe I could have all the answers I need.

By writing, I am asking myself questions: what do I think? How do I feel? What do I want?

I am not satisfied with my answers so I question on…

“Noël Coward said, “Work is more fun than fun.” (I learned this late, as a former long-distance truck driver with no degrees, who never wrote a word in my life until I was nearly forty years old, avoiding creative work because I was frozen by fear.)”

– Jerry Saltz, How to Be an Artist

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“Somewhere at some time we were brainwashed into thinking fun is bad and unthinkingly took on board the puritanical belief that we shouldn’t be enjoying ourselves. This same thinking is common in totalitarian regimes. They don’t like fun either. I say screw ’em. Let’s strike a blow for freedom and creativity. Enjoy yourself, express your ideas, and have fun doing so. You’ll do whatever it is that much better.”

– John Hegarty, Hegarty on Creativity

__________

It’s nice to be reminded by others that fun is a legitimate emotion that we should be feeling.

Fun means we aren’t thinking about any rules.

We are taking care of a deep satisfaction within us.

Can work really be more fun?

Good work is not frivolous but marvellous.

If we are smiling then surely what we create will be better.

It can’t always be fun, sometimes life closes in on us.

But surely we don’t have to invite the doom and gloom ourselves.

If something is fun for us, it’s more likely to be fun for others.

So fun can be an act of charity, or a service unto others.

What is fun for you?

Give yourself a tickle and find out.

“Don’t worry, Paddy’s not a typical army officer or guerrilla leader. He’s not a typical anything, he’s himself … a sort of Gypsy Scholar.

– Daphne Fielding, friend of Patrick Leigh Fermor (as quoted in Christopher McDougall, Natural Born Heroes)

__________

“A genius is the one most like himself.”

– Thelonius Monk

__________

In retrospect, people who are celebrated, often are a bit of a rebel, or a bit unusual.

Those seen as pioneers or innovators are so because they were the most like themselves.

It helps to be reminded that when we want to do something that we believe is right, we should care less about what people think now and behave as if we will be celebrated in the future.

It’s easier to understand with the perspective of time.

How could someone talk about us retrospectively?

I think it would give us a lot of confidence to trust in being ourselves.

I need a reminder to just be more myself today.

You know, they will laugh about your audacity in the future.

But why not laugh about it now?

“When you risk writing from where you’re at, you set in motion a whole set of internal processes. The first rotten sentence you write has a life you can inhabit, evaluate, cross out. To be replaced by a second, hopefully less rotten sentence. Maybe a good piece of description, a nice turn of phrase, a sharp line of dialogue.”

Dennis Palumbo, Writing From the Inside Out

__________

“Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together. Now, it’s your turn. Jump!”

Ray Bradbury, Zen in the Art of Writing

__________

There is vulnerability in writing.

There is a risk that we will reveal too much of our ourselves.

Or worse, reveal our limitations.

But writing helps us understand our hopes and dreams.

We must pass through the narrow pass of mediocrity to gain the upper paths to the summit.

And writing, like walking, starts with the first step.

We may wish to be at the top, but must start where we are.

At the bottom.

Looking up.

By writing we may find ourselves fragmenting.

The part of us we usually hide from the world wants to be seen on the page.

Maybe we keep it there.

Or we don’t.

We have the power of the edit.

To put ourselves back together on the page.

But there needs to be something there in the first place.

That’s why the best thing to do is jump into writing.

Put something on the page or screen.

You might not make it to the summit.

But you will still have an adventure.

“I had started fell running in my late 20s and so would enter mountain marathon races each year with friends, which were inevitably held in wild rocky territory in the Lake District, North Wales or the Highlands. The experience of running down mountains when you are young and fit is nothing short of exquisite. At times, it would feel like flying, as my legs just seemed to skim the surface of the mountain as we floated down it at speed in a kind of meditative dream.”

– John Peck, Restless

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“The field was tough and springy; my feet went down, went forward, and came back under me. I was not afraid of holes. I felt very light and a little better than usual, even. When I was a boy, in the summer, and the snow melted off the lower part of the Range below our cabin, I used to go down to where there was a field – a field that was like a road, though nobody had made it or used it and run, the first day I got the snowshoes off my feet. I was so used to them that it was hard to believe I wasn’t still lifting them step by step, and slowed way down from even normal walking. But after the thaw I’d go down and run with just my feet, and the whole land the flat and the mountains to one side, and everything I could see – speeded up, and I really took off. I felt like I was the fastest thing in the world, the fastest moving, the fastest thinking, the most free human there was.”

– James Dickey, To The White Sea

__________

We are connected to the animal kingdom when we move in nature.

We can experience the world as a bird in flight, a cat in pursuit or a human unchained.

A sense of freedom, that we can carry around with us.

Physical memories do not diminish at the same rate as emotional memories.

Taste and smell are physical memories that are notorious for propelling us into the past.

Our bodies remember those moments of adventure where we flowed across the landscape.

At rest, we can be like the dreaming dog: twitching in remembered strides.

A dog will wake from its dream in full expectation of its quotidian movement.

But we humans can suppress that need.

For how long has it been since I took flight?

“And…I learned an important lesson: Books are the fastest way to learn the basics. Yes, you need to dig in and do the work, but following the well-worn path walked by others saved me years of my own trailblazing.”

– Dan John, 40 Years With a Whistle

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“It struck me that we humans see only a part of what’s going on, we never see all of what’s going on.  Because of our varied experiences, because of where we sit, stand, live, who we know, how we were brought up, what we read, because of all these factors and many more, we can’t help but see things differently from other people. What does this mean for beginning writers?  It means that every human being is unique, and if a beginning writer is willing to write what he thinks, feels, observes and imagines, a distinct voice will emerge.  So don’t worry about discovering your voice—it’s already there.  All you need is the willpower to write, to keep on writing and to publish your work for the world to read someday.”

– Joseph Sutton, This Writing Life

__________

Books give me confidence to be myself.

I can admire, be inspired by, and be instructed by a book.

But rather than escaping into books to ignore myself, I find books bring me closer to who I am.

I can follow behind the words of others, picking up ideas as I go along.

I then use them to help structure my own creative efforts.

Dan John has guided my understanding of fitness and strength training for over a decade.

Joseph Sutton was the tipping point who, last year, inspired me to write every day.

The more I write, the less I want to write like anyone else.

I have my own voice, point of view and my individual, idiosyncratic way of constructing a sentence.

It’s not better, but it’s me.

But I need the words of others.

If I rub two quotations together, blow on them with words of my own.

A unique way of seeing catches alight.