A single brick in the wall

Published: Fri, 03/06/20

I sometimes like to think of myself as a writer, yet I am very bad at actually getting any writing done. Which is why it it has been a while since my last post to this list, even though I promise myself I will do one at least once a week. Yes, I have excuses, new baby (who is doing very well), sorting out my mother’s affairs (I never did like filling in forms and HMRC want a lot of information before they will allow probate to proceed), but I know that the real issue is lack of focus. The really sad part is that I do know the secret of writing because many years ago I was introduced to ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’, Robert M. Pirsig’s 1974 work of fictionalised autobiography. This book made a huge impression in the 1970s and certainly influenced my thinking about a lot of things at the time.

The passage that particularly comes to mind this morning describes an incident when the author was teaching in college. A fairly routine writing assignment was set with a title along the lines of; ‘The Town Where I Live’. Apparently most of the students turned in adequate pieces of writing in time for the deadline. One particular young lady could not get started for some reason and explained to her tutor that she just didn’t know what to write about. There then followed a series of discussions in which the tutor told his student to just describe the main street of her home town. Then just the centre of the community, then just the library and in each case the student complained that she didn’t know where to start. In the end Pirsig reports that the young woman was given a very specific instruction: Go to the cafe across the street from the library, look at the front of the building and count three bricks in from the left corner
and three bricks down. Then write a description of that brick. The story goes that the next morning the student turned in an excellent essay which more than met the original brief.

You can argue that this particular student was being a bit silly. All she had to do was describe something she saw every day of her life, so why didn’t she just get on with it? The problem was that she had too much choice in terms of what to write about and could not decide what to start with. Once her tutor had given her permission to approach the challenge via one brick in one wall of one building she could get started. The lesson being that if we are going to be creative we have to start with a very specific focus and move on from there.

A couple of months ago I was creating the fourth module of my Ice and Fire Stav Foundation programme. The main topic was going to be the Havamal and I was thinking that it would be relatively easy to write as there is so much to say about the ‘Sayings of the High One’. Except of course, there is so much contained in those 164 stanzas that I could not decide where to start. In fact, I found myself in a very similar position to the student in Pirsig’s book. So, what was the brick I needed to start with? For me it was the first line of Stanza 141 ‘Then I began to quicken and be wise,’ (Carolyne Larrington’s translation). Once I had reminded myself that the Havamal is devoted to gaining practical wisdom I was then able to write the rest of the module.

The problem with creativity is rarely having too little or nothing to work with. The real problem is an excess of options and not being able to choose what to discard. Sometimes, the less we have to work with the more necessary it is to be creative. My problems with writing over the past few months have not been for a lack of anything interesting to discuss. You are already aware of my big life events and there is a lot more I could be commenting on, both from a personal point of view and in the wider world. As far as the wider world is concerned, we certainly seem to be living under the old Chinese curse: ‘May you live in interesting times.’

regards

Graham

PS Some training opportunities coming up:

Tomorrow (7th of March) seminar in Beverley, please see https://iceandfire.org.uk/train.html

4th April in Somerset, check with me first before booking though as we might already be full for this one https://www.iceandfire.org.uk/somersetstav04042020.html

If you are based in the USA you might be interested in this one on the 30th and 31st of May in Illinois https://iceandfire.org.uk/usamay2020ma.html