Loving the Questions

 

As 2010 begins and a new decade stretches before us many of us will articulate goals for the new year — exercise thirty minutes a day, eat more vegetables, meet our best friends for drinks every other week. And for many of us, nestled between these goals will be a quiet, albeit fierce resolution to deepen our commitment to our craft.

 

We’ve read Gene Fowler’s remark: “Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” We know that the act of creation takes time and attention. We agree with Ayelet Waldman: discipline distinguishes the working writer.  We have faith in the muse.

 

But we can’t keep the business of Life at bay. It will soon color our post-holiday days with the domino effect of work deadlines and household demands. We know that some of our resolutions will fall out of favor, sidelined by necessity, victim to the crush of limited time. For some, the first thing we’ll postpone is the most abstract resolution of all: the act of creation; our elusive, ephemeral art.

 

OLP’s December/January interviewee, Paul Harding, notes that sometimes the impetus for a crucial scene begins for him as a question: “‘What does she think at that point?’ Or, ‘What does he do?’ Or, ‘What does the cemetery look like in the autumn?’”

 

Taking Harding’s cue, what if we just committed to capture our questions? What if we recorded the fact that the moment after the movie we wondered how they made the 3D rendering of London? What if we filled our half-hour subway commute with observations about the passengers around us? What if, after washing the dishes, we committed fifteen minutes of every day to recording questions we would like to have the time to answer?

 

I love notebooks. From mini-Moleskines to Apica twin-rings from Japan, notebooks of all sizes fill my bookshelves. But away from my study, in the middle of a crowd, struck by a thought, sometimes pen and paper elude me. These days, though, I always have my cell phone. So for the coming year I’ve resolved to do as Harding does and begin with the questions, and I’m using these mobile tools to capture them:

Tumblr’s call-to-post audio feature.

Evernote for organizing web ephemera.

Jott to convert voicemail messages to emails and texts.

The iPhone’s WriteRoom app synced with SimpleText.ws and Notational Velocity to capture on-the-go notes.

 

“Love the questions themselves,” Rilke writes, “like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.”

 

Here’s to a year full of questions, and to the time to write their answers.

 

Minding the Muse:

“The Necktie” (animated short)

How do you figure out which literary journals to submit to?

The 100 best last lines from novels.