Time to do what we love

On her wonderful blog about the writing life (and other things) Miss Good on Paper quotes John Dufresne who says that we always find time to do what we love - and they are probably right. However, I find that I need to moodle around at my desk for a while before I finally settle to what really gives me a lot of pleasure: writing tanka or haiku, adding to my novel or tinkering away on here. I need to settle in like a hen scratching the straw around, fluffing out her feathers, calling her chicks and flopping into exactly the right spot.
A quiet and clean house helps. Barring myself from Gmail and Facebook is mandatory. A good night's sleep and a gritty coffee put me on fast forward. Today has been a good day for writing. My story for The Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize is well on its way. I gathered a few haiku for Creatrix, the WA Poets online poetry mag and I even worked out how to do web links on this blog!
The Limestone Tanka poets met at the National Botanic Gardens in Canberra on Sunday and discussed our writing processes. Although we all carry scruffy notebooks we each use them differently. One composes on one page and writes the finished tanka in a fair hand on the opposite page. Another scribbles phrases, words or skeleton ideas in a spiral bound pad. Some showed A4 pages full of crossings out, part poems, full ones, pressed flowers, crumpled newspaper articles and theatre programmes.
After the talk we wandered up the mountain or down onto the lawns among the eucalypts and penned a few ideas and tanka. My mind erupted with ideas and connections. Today I captured them and worked an hour or so on them. Tomorrow I work a 10 hour shift and will sink into bed without a backward glance at pen or computer, much as I love them.
I agree with Miss Good on Paper but sometimes doing things we love is not as easy as it sounds. I aim to keep my eye on the goal and work towards it without despairing of reaching it. Goethe sums my writing life up: "Do not hurry; do not rest."