I was listening to an episode of the Design Matters podcast this morning, an interview with Eric Zimmer.  If you're wondering why I was listening to a podcast about design, you can thank Steve (see examples of his work at his blog or his website), as he sent it to me weeks ago, thinking I would like it.  He was mainly right, as I liked a lot of what he had to say in the last quarter or so of the podcast.  The first part focuses on his life, which is interesting and inspirational in its own right, but not what caught my attention.

Near the end, he starts talking about living intentionally, though he doesn't really use that word.  He does talk about decision fatigue and a cognitive bank (though I'm not sure if that's the exact term he uses).  What he means is that we have a limited ability to make decisions or think about things.  If we wake up and have to decide what to wear, what to have for breakfast, what time to leave for work (even what time to actually get out of bed), etc., then that leaves us less cognitive ability to make important decisions (you can read about the same idea in Willpower by John Tierney and Roy Baumeister).  Anyone who knows me understands that I largely try to live my life this way.

This idea led into his next one, which was about consuming.  He quoted a friend of his who said that we spend 95% of our time consuming, consuming, consuming, and only 5% of our lives reflecting on what we're consuming.  He talked about how the internet and Netflix are designed to lead us to click to the next article or blog post or show rather than stopping and reflecting on what we've read or seen.  His argument is that, if we stopped and reflected on whatever we've consumed for even thirty minutes, our lives wouldn't be the same.

I like this idea a good deal.  Even the lists I make (movies I've seen and books I've read) can lead me to do the same thing, as it can become about numbers, not about thinking about or digesting what I'm watching or reading.  Our society encourages such an approach to life, as everything focuses on consumption.  If Thoreau wrote that "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation," our society needs to hear that most people lead lives of quiet obliviousness (they might even lead lives of loud obliviousness, given all of the noise in our world, but quiet refers more to the quality of our lives, I would argue).  We consume emails and texts and (ahem) blog posts and videos and pictures and on and on through our supposedly smart phones, and we ignore the world around us.  The only way to be able to create art is to be aware.  For all of the argument that our technology connects us, I tend to see it distract people from what is really important more than anything else (and, yes, I'm fine to sound like a crotchety old man here).

All of this leads him to envy.  He quoted Theodore Roosevelt on envy (I would put it here, but I can't find the quote, unfortunately), where he effectively says that envy hurts both ourselves and the other person.  The host of the show, Debbie Millman, tries to argue that social media forces us to envy people more (or create more envy), but Zimmer disagrees.  He responds that nothing forces us to envy people, and I agree.  We have choice in the matter, and we need to choose wisely.

He doesn't directly relate this idea to art, but it's clearly implied.  He talks about how we believe we'll only be happy once we get x or y in our lives (connecting to consumption, of course), and that's true about creating art.  We believe that we'll be happy when we get a poem published in that journal or a novel accepted by this publisher.  The truth is we won't be happy then, even if our book becomes a best seller or we begin receiving invitations to speak all over, maybe even give a TED talk.  The art itself needs to make us satisfied, not because it is perfect, but because we love the act of creation itself.

If you have thirty minutes or so, you should listen to the podcast.  Then, you should take thirty more minutes and think about what he has to say.  It might just inspire you, too.

David Mitchell gives some good advice about writing in this article from The Atlantic.  Not surprisingly, he talks about how to create worlds, which he's so good at.

Rachel Toor wrote a really good article about running and writing a few weeks ago.  When I first read the essay, I could identify with it, given that I've just started a book-length project, and I'm beginning to get in shape to train for a marathon, if my knees will let me (and note those levels of training).  I thought about that connection this morning, as I was running and thinking about my writing.  It was actually easy to think about the writing, as the running was not going well.

I'm sure I can come up with lots of reasons as to why the run was bad (and by bad, I mainly mean slower than I've run in a long time).  I was sore from doing some work around the house earlier in the week; I had also done two hard workouts that week; I gave blood a week ago, and it always takes my body some time to get back to normal after that; it was raining; I've only been back from a two-week trip to England for two weeks, and, while I ran there, I didn't do the serious running I do here.  I could go on, but you get the point.

Whenever I'm having bad runs, I usually have two thoughts that comfort me.  First, I know that I'm out there and no one else is (or at least no one I saw).  Most recreational runners see the rain, and they stay inside, while I'm out there slogging away.  I used to think that during really early morning runs, as well, when I would see people just beginning to move around, lights coming on in people's homes (often blue-ish lights from the television, actually).  But that was before I learned to like early morning runs.  The second thought is that I'm not running for today; I'm actually running for January or February, that time when I am doing the serious training for the longer races I like to run when I'm able.  Today's run might be bad, but putting in the time will help me in the coming months.

It was that thought that led me to think about writing.  Those of us who try to sit down on a regular schedule and write, like those of us who run on a regular schedule, have bad days.  We don't know where the story is going or how we're going to do anything poetic with the one image we have in our heads, and we sit there and look at the page or screen.  And we sit there.  And we sit there.  It's days like this that we wonder if we shouldn't just wait for inspiration to strike and only write on those days.

However, we don't write for today any more than I run for today.  We write so that a month from now or a year from now, we have a draft of something to work with, to make better.  I once heard Ted Kooser talk about his writing process, and he said that he sits in the same recliner every morning from about four until seven or so.  He said that six out of seven mornings, he doesn't produce anything worth keeping.  But one out of those seven will lead to something that just might work.  He believes he needs the other six days to have the seventh.  He's not writing for those days; he's writing for the future.

Whenever I sit down to work on whatever project I'm in the midst of, I try to remember that the draft of the poem or story doesn't have to be perfect, that I'll have a future to hone it and make it stronger.  But I need those bad days of sitting there, writing things I know are not very good, because I know that they will get me to somewhere better, or at least give me something to work from later.  A month from now, perhaps, I'll be looking over the draft and now see where I should go with that image or character.  Or, just maybe, I'll read something I wrote today and I'll think, "That's not bad."  That's a good day.