There was a time when an artist might be lucky enough to find some wealthy patron to fund his full-time pursuit of writing, sculpting, painting, composing, etc. Note the use of the masculine pronoun; these well-funded artists were almost always male. For that and many reasons, I’m not foolish enough to wish I’d been born into such times. Women, as a rule, are better off when we aren’t considered second-class citizens or property.
[caption id="attachment_2740" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Desperately Seeking Solitude"]
[/caption]
I do, however, yearn for quiet stretches of solitude, for unscheduled time, for peace and quiet and space to think, all of which I imagine those well-funded artists had in abundance. Today, it's difficult to find such time when the demands of home and the day job seem to fill every inch of creative space, when our muse seems to have fled with the cooler weather, when we are over-stressed and under-focused. I’ve been struggling with all of these things lately and yet I’ve been forcing myself to write or more specifically to revise my novel, because as the evil genius William Haywood Henderson says, “It’s not going to write itself.” Not going to revise itself either, in case you’re wondering.
In the interest of gaining a little focus, leaving behind the stress, chasing down my muse, I headed west to the newly acquired vacation home of a lovely and generous friend. My always-supportive husband helped me load the car with a bag full of brain food—chocolate covered almonds, a jar of Nutella, the last of my home-baked whole wheat bread—plus a hardcopy of my manuscript, my laptop, various and sundry writing utensils, notepads and other things I thought I might need.
I drove over mountain passes while singing along to Steve Earle and Kim Richey and John Prine. I followed directions that took me down a number of roads identified only by numbers and finally dumped me onto an unpaved stretch that wound around for miles and left me wondering if I was lost. Finally, I reached my destination. The house was charming, surrounded by evergreens and nestled into the land as if it had sprouted there. Inside, I was greeted by a nice kitchen, a comfy sofa, big windows on every wall and skylights in every room. There was no television and though I’d been told there was WiFi, I never accessed it. I spent three days with nothing but my novel for company. I wrote one particularly vexing scene three times. I pulled apart a section and rearranged the scenes like a puzzle. In other words, I worked. I turned off the phone, I ignored emails, I willfully pretended that the world outside did not exist. I made progress, but there is still work to be done.
I’m heading back in a few weeks for another focused session and in the meantime I’ll continue to write as much and as well as I can while surrounded the day-to-day cacophony of my life—the ringing phones, the urgent emails, the meetings to attend, the chores to be done. And while it would be nice in theory to have unlimited resources and all the time in the world to focus on writing, I suspect I'd soon seek out a hobby or project of some sort to plunge me back into the world. Solitude is wonderful and I need it now more than ever, but I also need people. Community matters. It's the reason so many of us keep showing up at Lighthouse for workshops and social gatherings and more.
All of which is to say that I do have patrons, loads of them. They support my work by giving me space when I need it, by providing feedback when I ask for it and by encouraging me to just keep writing. I'm pretty lucky. I'm very grateful.
