"Oh my god, it doesn't mean that much to you."

I'm always reading things and hearing people say things like 'Success is 90% perspiration...,' 'Inspiration is for amateurs,' etc - little aphorisms encouraging me to work when I don't feel like it, to talk when I have nothing to say.

Recently Johnny told me about an interview he read with Craig Minowa, the genius behind the Minneapolis band Cloud Cult. (Personally, I believe Craig will be heralded as a prophet a hundred years from now, not just a musician, but that's for another time.) In the interview, Craig said that he never makes himself write. Instead, he lets it come to him. That's how he knew he was a songwriter in the first place, so why should he try to force it now? He knows it will come.

That made me think, about several things. One thing that's held my attention for a week or so now is the transition of identity for 'someone who starts writing as a hobby' to a 'writer.' How does one know when to start calling themselves a writer? In general, the difference might be that a people who likes to write waits for their cue, while a writer sits down and churns out words. This is no comment on whether it's good or bad writing, for either type of writer. But I think Craig has a point. For a long time I wrote because I thought of interesting things. I didn't identified myself with it, and I didn't think about it most of the time. As soon as I changed my methods, when I started chasing after ideas, when I started "perspiring" because that's what writers do, the words became more elusive. I had become a writer, but I had changed the methods that made me write in the first place.

This isn't to say I plan to sit around waiting for lightning to strike. It's certainly more nuanced than that. For instance, I think inspiration has a lot to do with the raw material, from which is shaped a novel - but that novel requires perspiration, non-inspired editing and shaping and molding and cutting. For each there is a time.

P.S. The line at the top comes from The National's song "Racing Like a Pro."

And today's photo....

(This is a drawing I made for Suz when she was in Korea. It reminded me of how she was looking out into the world from her tenth story apartment in Peong-Tek.)