Thoughts and views about writing, researching and creating. All the doubts and wonders I come across, all the surprises and discovery of new roads I am lucky to experience when working with my non-fiction texts. A big and warm welcome to you, I’m very happy to see you here. - Majken xx
I once read about a painter who sometimes was so depressed that he couldn’t paint. When it happened, he would gather his paintings in a room, line them up against the wall, and talk to them. He’d tell them that now he'd given them so much, he'd given them life, he'd made them into being - perhaps he even told them that he'd given them a piece of his soul, I’m not sure - and now, now he needed them to breathe some life into him, to help him function so that he could do what he was set on this earth to do which was to paint. Often his appeal would work, he revealed, and I thought it was such a powerful scenery - and beautiful too. Also, I felt that what he did makes perfect sense.
When you create something, it’s as if this thing before you slowly begins to come alive - step by step, brush stroke by brush stroke, word by word. You do the work, and little by little, your creation starts to breathe. At some point, it even reaches a stage when you can begin communicating with it, which can be of great help. I do this myself. For instance, when I’m low on motivation. Or - even worse - when I question my ability to do the work. “Is it good enough?” “Who am I to think I can make this story come alive?” Things like that.
Also, I feel that I’m not alone. I have some company on this road I’m travelling - the company of this creature of a text I’ve created.
What I then do is, for instance, to take a look at pieces of texts I’ve written that I believe work pretty well. Or perhaps passages that others have told me they like. I read them over, and somehow it’s easier for me to get back on track afterwards. All I need to do then is carry on where this text has left. Continue to write in the same rhythm, the same mood, the same tone. It offers me its energy, and in that way, I’m not starting over from scratch. Also, I feel that I’m not alone. I have some company on this road I’m travelling - the company of this creature of a text I’ve created.
[..] our behaviour is not “defined by the objects in the environment but by our relationship to them.”
At other times I might reach out to all the objects surrounding me at my desk. The new books, the old books, the newspaper articles, the laptop, the notice board, the pencils, the erasers, the post-its. In the company of all these things, I feel at home. They are my good old friends, so to speak, and I even have small conversations with them from time to time, which is always encouraging. All they ever want me to do is continue where I left off. They don’t question if it’s a good idea; no, they are there, dressed in their working outfit, ready to get on with it. “Are you coming?” - They ask, and I can only reply: “yes, sure I am.” Everything else seems rude and inappropriate. And then we start doing what we’re supposed to do and as we’ve done so many times before, the writing, the research, the structuring, the editing.
Perhaps you sit there thinking it’s a bit far out to communicate with objects like this, and well, you’re probably right. The author James Clear agrees with me, though. In his book Atomic Habits, he writes how our behaviour is not “defined by the objects in the environment but by our relationship to them.” He encourages us to stop thinking about our surroundings as filled with objects but instead to think about them as filled with relationships (he does not mention speaking with the things, but you are free to add this. I’m sure he does not mind). For one person, he says, a couch is where she sits reading at night; for another, it is where she watches tv after work.
To me, my desk is where I sit and do my writing, and all the objects surrounding me here are like living creatures, colleagues if you will, I communicate with daily. This communication can seem more crucial when you, like me, work independently and don’t have co-workers to support you through the day. But also, it is something we all can use, I believe. Many people have something they create, whether physically or in the more immaterial department, a side job or a hobby, and communicating with this thing and its milieu can be fruitful. It is a way to devote ourselves, to focus on the item and the time we spend with it. It can make the work more efficient - you get it done. But also it can make the process more personal and satisfying. And if you somewhere down the road need to ask it for help, as the painter did with his paintings, I believe you are more likely to get an answer.
Majken xx
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Thanks for reading. I’m happy to see you here! - Majken xx
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