Plain, ordinary work?

Right at the top of my list of Things I Want To Do But Keep Successfully Putting Off And Choosing To Do Nothing Instead….. right at the top of this list is, “Writing an appreciative letter to Emma Donoghue.”
She is (far and away) one of my favorite authors, for sure. I have written of her, elsewhere, and hither-and-yon.
In a recent interview, she had some real neat things to say about the writing process.
For instance, when asked, “Do you feel that inspiration comes directly from the Muse down your arm onto the page?”
Donoghue: “Would that it did. No, it’s plain ordinary work, I’m afraid. I was on a panel once with a writer who claimed that ‘we do our best writing unconsciously, in our sleep’, and I could just imagine how a dynamo like Charles Dickens would have howled with laughter at that one.”
Or this one, “Where do you get your ideas?”
She says: “Impossible to tell. It's like asking someone where they picked up a cold.”
And I loved this. “Do your characters take over and seem to write the book themselves?”
“No, I make them do what I want. (Except that occasionally they refuse!)”

Plain ordinary work.
See… for the longest time I have wanted to write a book.
I am not kidding.
I have always told myself that I am waiting for the BIG PICTURE…. waiting for the book to come to me and say, “Here I am! Write me!”
Waiting for the story.
Is there any more glamorous thought than the one that involves walking into a random bookstore and seeing a book you have written… right there on the shelf?
All manner of mortals picking it up? Looking at it? Taking it over to the cashier?
Hmmm…
Perhaps seeing your own musical CD in the rack at a music store is a similar example of wishful thinking, but for me, (The Great Cipriano©) the book on the shelf supercedes this. I want a book. I guess I would like to be an author.
But…. plain ordinary work?
GOOD LORD!
This is what I do, 8 to 5, every day!
I was sort of hoping a book would fall out of a cloud, knock me on the head and write itself!
No… my hunch is that Donoghue is being modest… downplaying, understating what authorship really is.
Writing a book is a monumental task…. if it were “plain ordinary work”, hell, I’d get started right now.
Tonight.
At the same time though, what she is declaring…. is that it is WORK.
Whatever type of adjectives we put in front of the word “work” the thing that is inescapable is that work is going to be involved.
Sweat. Tears. Anguish. A pound of flesh!
And if you have ever read any of her absolutely fabulous books, you will know that Donoghue has put a lot of work, a lot of time and research, and revision and work, work, work, into everything she has given us. There is nothing “plain” and/or “ordinary” about the result.
It is, in a word…. perfection.

What a privilege to be able to recline on a couch and read novels.
What a sobering thought, to realize that none were written in this position!

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