For me that process is quite painstaking. I’m just very slow. I think this is true of many writers. It takes me edges to write a sentence. You know, in my daily job was it where I live as an administrator, it is just terrifically difficult for me. It really is. And for reasons that are, perhaps would not be evident to most administrators, I mean there are many difficulties associated with administration.
But for me, the big one is that, I can’t write, I just can’t toss up of an e-mail. You know, I just can’t dash one off. I have to look at it and turn it over, and you know, see that it’s written with kind of, as if it could be written on the headstone somewhere. And that’s not good, that’s not good.
So, but one of the things that one has acquired I suppose, is the patience for that and the patience to go slowly, comparatively slowly, we’re talking about what has been like a couple of days of writing a poem, even though it looks as if, of course it was written in about five minutes left, that’s the whole idea. As you know, it takes a week to do that. So just be alert to that, and also again, at the risk of being tiresome here of cherishing, cherishing ignorance.
The very basic principle of work here, if I know what I am doing, you probably well turned and vise versa. It’s as simple as that. If I know what I am doing, and you know what I am doing, what is the point? There is no point. We should go and watch a movie. There is no point of even starting if we both know what is happening. And the only way one can be sure of that, is for the first person on the role either the writer. First reader writer or writer-reader is not to know what’s going on.
That does not mean that one’s brain outside the door, absolutely not, because the other side of this actually is that it requires much more in the way of intelligence, than most of us can manage. It really requires an extraordinary, you know, intensive focus on reading those words as they come out of that place without knowing. So the focus of knowing upon unknowing on a negotiation back and forth, thru and fro, between not knowing and knowing and not knowing—unknowing, that’s work, it’s done. And it’s only, only only, if you could properly respect ignorance and there is half of chance in that.
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