Gone Writing

“He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.” When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.

-John 21:6

Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh

It’s 6:15am Friday morning, I’m up drinking coffee and writing.

I try to write throughout the week, a little bit each day, keeping in mind that my deadline for a completed and emailed blog is 7:00am Friday morning. The weekly deadline is not a burden, it is a joy. A gentle pressure, reminding me to try a little bit each day and see what forms at the end of seven days.

The piece this week is no good. I read it over and over these past few days. The tone is all off, it’s not funny enough and comes across as whiny and somewhat incoherent. When I read it to my wife on Thursday night I can sense the piece is dead. It’s tiny heart rate flat lining into nothing.  

Oh well, I tried. Maybe I’ll take a week off from the blog…

Photo by Lum3n

Yet here I am, up bright and early, drinking coffee and sitting in my spot. Writing is a whole lot like fishing.

Nothing creative is ever produced, rather it is caught like a fish. You carve out time to go down to your favorite fishing spot – a coffee shop, an early morning living room, a desk during your lunch break – and you wait in silence for the fish to bite.

Some days the fishing is bad. You wait in the cold, wondering why you’re out here at this hour, all alone, fishing pole in hand. Maybe you sense a little nibble, or a slight movement from the bobber. Could this be an idea? Are there words and paragraphs biting on my line?

But on those days you’ll return to shore empty handed, having caught nothing. Perhaps another person would feel discouraged by this or that they’d wasted their time. Nothing to show for it all! Just an empty bucket and a few hours before work tossed down the drain!

But the secret for true fishermen is that the outcome doesn’t necessarily matter, there is joy in being out there on the water. The solitude is lifegiving.

Then there are days when the fishing is dynamite. Every cast is immediately struck by a fish. You can barely pull them out of the water fast enough. The words and ideas are spawning right underneath your boat, and the conditions both within the water and the air are ideal. You will find that the biggest fish are caught in close sequence, one right on top of the other, rather than spaced out equally. These are frantic days.

But, whether cold and windy, with nothing biting, or days when the fish are practically jumping into the boat, you learn to enjoy the moment for what it is.

And so, life is also a whole lot like writing and fishing. Every day you wake up and throw your pole in the water ready to receive whatever the waters are giving you. Somedays it’s not much, just a few tiny fish not even big enough to eat, and you end up throwing them back. Other days it’s a whole lot, and you’re going to be busy, running around just trying to receive well all the bounty you’ve been given. And then once in a while, you catch something so big and beautiful it’s worthy to be mounted on your wall at home.

But whatever it is you’re catching that day, you’ve got be awake and ready to receive it, otherwise you won’t catch anything at all.