I hear ya, Sully, on the caveat — I’m a balance kind of guy, and I agree that too much time is just as bad as too little. Lots of writers prefer the focus a deadline brings, and/or life/personal pressures. I’m too much in the world with work and family at this time to afford the price for escaping into dream, but I am trying my best to do the transmogrifying thing (so to speak).

Learning to use the world around you is indeed the cure…

Many writers, from Dostoyevsky to Poe, have noted that they wrote best under pressure and chaos. That may have been in part because the writing was an escape or offered a way to transmogrify life’s problems into art. Nevertheless, finding the ideal circumstances to write — i.e. time, atmosphere, focus — can be a curse. The indictment of a blank screen, the lack of stimulation, the pressure to fill the void with your imagination, the sheer temptation to procrastinate because you have the luxury of time…these things can grow into monsters.

But for sure the cure involves learning how to use the world around you. Which is what most of my columns address, I guess. Thanks for highlighting the central problem of creativity, Gerard.

– Sully

You have to use everything that’s given to you, is what I mean, I suppose. All the minutes count the same, so why waste any of them?

Good essay, and some very valid considerations for anyone creative. 400 characters on a mobile phone. On the train. Every day.

I love that story.

-DNW