Hollowell: The Plow Mule and the Angel

Many years ago, I told another writer that I was going back
to school to get my MFA in Creative Writing, and she replied, “Oh, I would
never do that.” When I pressed her a little further, she explained that she
felt that going to school to learn to write would destroy her “spark.”

Hmmmm…..

I continue to meet people like her, folks who think that
writing is purely inspirational, and well, purely pure. It either springs fully
formed from your split skull or you are sullying it with your grubby mortal
fingers. No revision (the horrors). No school. And certainly no such thing as
setting up a schedule, or a word count goal, or even, for that matter trying to
write when you aren’t divinely inspired.

When these fine people hear that I’ve plowed a significant
sum of money into a MFA, or that I do in fact have both a writing and
submission schedule, and that I read craft books (well, mostly criticism books
these days) and other’s writing with an eye towards cribbing some good
techniques, well, let’s just say that they sigh and look askance.

For the record, I do think that there is a balance between
effort and inspiration. I do think that a writer can deaden his or her work by
trying too hard, revising it to meet the needs of a particular market, or
setting such narrow confines as to all but fetter the work. There is room for inspiration
out there, but if I waited to write until I was struck with it, I would write
about three poems a year. Maybe four if someone bought me a bottle of good
scotch.

And so it was with great glee that I read an interview on The Rumpus with the author Elizabeth Gilbert who managed to sum
up my feelings beautifully.

I’ve come to think of it as the
plow mule and the angel. This is how I think of it: there’s a contract between
you and the mystery. And the mystery is the thing that brings life to the work.
But your part of the contract is that you have to be the plow mule, or the
mystery won’t show up. It might not even show up if you do your work. There’s
no guarantee. It doesn’t promise you anything, but I can promise you that if
you don’t do your work, it won’t show up. That’s the only guarantee. It’s not
going to wake you up in the middle of the night to be like, Hey I’ve got this
golden gift for you! It doesn’t do it that way. It needs to see that you’re
giving the full commitment.

The whole interview is here.

So, are you willing to be the plow mule? Are you willing to
put in the time? Malcolm Gladwell postulates that it takes 10,000 hours of
focused practice to master a complex skill such as writing, composing music,
developing innovative software code, completing micro-surgery…. For most of us,
finding 10,000 hours to practice our craft means actually scheduling it. Get up early
in the morning, stay up late at night after the kids are in bed, work a
part-time job (and just spend a little less,) or shut yourself in your little
home office on sunny days. Commit to the practice of writing. Be the mule, keep
your appointments at your desk, so that when the angel of inspiration visits,
she’ll know where to find you.

Erin Coughlin Hollowell is a poet and writer who lives in Homer, Alaska. Prior to landing there, she lived on both coasts, in big cities and small towns, pursuing many different professions from tapestry weaving to arts administration. She earned her MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University in 2009. Her poetry has most recently been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Permafrost, Terrain: A Journal of the Built and Natural Environment, and Sugar House Review. Her first collection of poetry Pause, Traveler was published on June 1, 2013 by Boreal Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press. Her blog is www.beingpoetry.net.