Real Words

The above image is not mine. It is the mosaic collage art of Stacy Alexander, a Bay Area artist who works in a number of different mediums to create beautiful, clearly eye-catching work. Learn more about her from her interview at San Fran Voice. 

Today I will write at least forty different articles on a variety of topics. People who first find this out are often aghast at the fact that I can write so much in one sitting. But this is my job. In order to survive as a freelance writer in the most expensive city in the country, I am forced to be prolific. As a full-time writer, I pride myself on my ability to continually craft original content that is researched and (hopefully) interesting while turning it out at a rapid pace. Mind you, I don’t always write so much in one day. But I regularly write a bulk of articles in one sitting. When you’re on a roll, you’re on a roll. And when you write to live, you make sure you get on a roll often.

But before I sit down to write those articles, I enjoy my morning routine. When I wake up, I read for a little while. This morning it was a book that I’m enjoying by a Bay Area author who fell in love with a Northern California inmate and writes to tell people how that happened. I brought my coffee to bed and read a chapter before getting up and doing the normal shower and breakfast thing. Then I did the morning work - the applications for new writing jobs, the checking email to make sure nothing needed immediate attention, the dash to the mailbox to send out what needs to go out this morning. Then came the second round of easing into the morning … the second cup of coffee, the journal writing, the making of the To Do list.

It’s eleven in the morning and I am only just about to get started on my workday. But this is the only way that I am prepared to work so intensively for so many hours. And before I do, I’ll make a collage. I don’t do this every morning, but it’s a regular part of my ritual. I usually find an inspiring quote amidst the morning reading or sometimes don’t come up with a quote at all. I sit at my desk with a selection of magazines, cutting out images as they inspire me. Then I arrange them together, sometimes adding the quote, taping them carefully on to a small piece of paper to make a miniature collage. I prop that up on my desk to look at it throughout the day, to remind myself that there is time for the little things.

I’m no artist. Creating these collages doesn’t meet some specific desire to create visual art. But that is precisely the point. What I am is a writer. When I sit down at the keyboard, I need to be focused. I need to remember that I am creating what will be the steps along the path of my career. What I am doing is working. I may love it, I may take pleasure in the projects, I may be prolific at least in small part because I thrive on what I do … but it is still work. I am lucky to love my work, but as with any job, it is sometimes a job. I am not an artist, and so I can sit down and create a collage and there is no pressure, no thought behind it, no concern for the resulting product. If I decide that I hate the piece, I flip the page and start anew the next day. I don’t care if it’s “good” or “bad” … I care only about the few minutes that it takes to make it, the minutes in which I am completely immersed in the physically creative process of crafting that collage.

I think every writer needs a second creative outlet. We need some sort of visual art, performance art, design work that we love to do but only as a hobby. We need a low-pressure way to explore the different things that we are thinking and feeling and experiencing in a way that doesn’t have to do with words. We need to wake up in the mornings and ease into our day doing something artistic that isn’t our work. This is the way that we refill the creative well, the way that we get ourselves ready to be prolific in our writing.

It’s time to do that now, but I have not forgotten the importance of the steps that come before.

[Tags] collage, art, writing, writer’s life, creativity, inspiration [/Tags]