{"id":2220,"date":"2008-12-06T13:03:56","date_gmt":"2008-12-06T18:03:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=2220"},"modified":"2008-12-06T13:03:56","modified_gmt":"2008-12-06T18:03:56","slug":"leaving-a-light-on-the-reality-of-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/leaving-a-light-on-the-reality-of-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving a Light On the Reality of Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Short-lived<\/a><\/p>\n

[Don’t assume the above is the whole story. Click the image to see the
\ncomplete strip from Shannon Wheeler’s “How to Be Happy” series.]<\/em><\/p>\n

Like me, you have probably heard more than once the assertion — pronounced in a gentle voice, at the end of a radio commercial (for the Motel 6 chain) consisting entirely of nothing but<\/em> that gentle voice — “We\u2019ll leave the light on for you.” Like me, you may have assumed that the speaker, self-identified as a “Tom Bodett,” either founded or at least owns or otherwise presides over Motel 6.<\/p>\n

Not so. Here’s how Wikipedia<\/a> summarizes his work: “…an American author, voice actor and radio host.” Far from having any official capacity for Motel 6, he’s just its “current spokesman.” (Many more details can be found at Bodett’s own site<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

In a commentary broadcast a couple years ago on Bob Edwards’s XM Radio program, Bodett talked about a side of “the writing life” which will be painfully familiar to just about anyone who’s attempted to take it seriously. Bodett himself is kidding. Sort of:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Whenever somebody asks me what I do I tell them I\u2019m a writer. It’s what goes on my tax returns and anyplace else that calls for me to declare an occupation. But I’m not being completely honest when I do that.<\/p>\n

I am a writer who doesn’t write. I admit it. I know other writers. I read about other writers, and I am not like them. They write. I don’t. I have a perfectly good explanation for this though — I can’t stand writing.<\/p>\n

Most of a writer’s day entails sitting in a chair doing nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but at least nothing worth writing about.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

Why not doing the thing you’re supposed to be doing feels better than doing it, I don’t know. I should write about that someday.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

In recent years I keep my writing area in a room over my woodshop. I’ve been a carpenter and amateur woodworker my whole life. Lately I am getting really good at it. I even had a piece of furniture I designed and built featured in Fine Woodworking Magazine<\/em> — which is the woodworker’s equivalent of seeing your story in the New Yorker<\/em>. But I’ll never see a story in the New Yorker<\/em>. Not as long as I keep calling myself a writer anyway.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Read the whole thing here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Not-writing is indeed a sort of instant gratification whose gravitational pull (most? all?) writers have a hard time resisting. We spiral into it like satellites launched into too-low trajectories.<\/p>\n

Interestingly — weirdly, for that matter — it’s also one of the topics they’re most interested in writing about.* Maybe I’m not paying attention, or just don’t know the right people, but I’ve never heard artists or composers kid with one another about the difficulty of wanting to work — no matter how difficult the work itself might be. They want to work, and they do.<\/p>\n

Sheesh. What’s wrong with them, anyway? Why can’t they be more like us? Haven’t they ever heard about misery loving company?<\/p>\n

____________________________________<\/p>\n

* Er, guilty as charged, I guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Don’t assume the above is the whole story. Click the image to see the complete strip from Shannon Wheeler’s “How to Be Happy” series.] Like me, you have probably heard more than once the assertion — pronounced in a gentle voice, at the end of a radio commercial (for the Motel 6 chain) consisting entirely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[183,273,5,209,713],"tags":[326,796,797,798,799],"class_list":{"0":"post-2220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-everyday-life","7":"category-comics","8":"category-06_writing","9":"category-the-business","10":"category-humor-writing_cat","11":"tag-tom-bodett","12":"tag-writers-block","13":"tag-not-writing","14":"tag-shannon-wheeler","15":"tag-how-to-be-happy","16":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-zO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2220"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2273,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2220\/revisions\/2273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}