Joy of Man’s Desiring . . . Writing?
Joy of Man’s desiring is one of the most popular wedding musical tune shown on TV.
It has a very religious origin and Johann Bach composed the actual musical piece back in 1723.
I did a bit of research and realized that the main theme of the music, and the lyrics that accompany it sometimes, is that the person singing the hymn finds comfort and joy in Jesus. But that’s not the main idea of this blog.
The Joy of This Man’s Desiring
The joy I wanted to talk about — what brings me joy — is writing. The act of writing. Now I appreciate the above mentioned musical piece very much and as I was thinking of writing this blog on the topic of “Why I keep writing . . .” I thought that’s because it gives me joy.
I have been writing creatively for more than eleven years now. It’s not a hobby. It can’t be. More like a second career (a part-time one, given my full-time commitment with SAP ERP consulting).
What One Thing would you do for free?
Stephen King (famous horror writer) said in one of his interviews, “I would do it for free, if I couldn’t do it for money,” and he basically meant that writing gives him such tremendous joy that he would happily do it for free. Then he added, “I love doing it for money.” The audience cracked up.
Jokes made by King aside (who I admire for his sheer prolificity if nothing else), I can understand what he means when he says he’d do it for free. It’s very similar with hobbies. People do them for free. Spending hours sometimes even days doing things that might even cost a handsome amount of money.
Writing doesn’t cost me really anything except my time of course. I can start writing and forget the world. Almost.
It is as effortless (I mean voluntary writing, not writing university assignment, which was never really fun to do) as breathing. However, I don’t write as much as I could. Often I have time but somehow I think writing would be a waste of time. That’s the calculating mind talking. I love with productive and somehow my productivity obsession made me think that writing is not generating enough rewards.
I was wrong. It dawned upon me that the value in writing for me is the mental clarity it provides. In the world we live in — and I live in same world, for instance — our focus and thoughts are constantly interrupted by ads, beeps, ding-dongs and Netflix (or AmazonPrime). For me writing comes as close to meditation as it could.
For some people going to gym and exercising is a sort of meditation (Matt D’Vella, YouTube documentary maker e.g.) As I write this blog, I feel indeed in somewhat of a meditative state. It’s the rarest of the states I am in on a daily basis. I do try to meditate but that gets interrupted in the work rush.
But writing really just happens. You get an idea, sit down, mentally sketch a few points and boom you start writing. Or drawing (if you are into art). It’s the joy in writing that keeps me going. My blogs tend to be medium or short length but I could write much longer, only I would hate to edit them afterwards (not at all enjoyable).
Editing
If editing were enjoyable, I would not have three unpublished novel manuscripts in my digital drawers (my first historical mystery novel to my second fantasy one to my third contemporary one!). I do have unpublished content. That’s because editing scares me. I have never really admitted it that openly. Writing excites me. Editing scares me. Annoys me.
With blogging the joy of my writing is in not having to edit. Rewriting can be tedious. Even Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love — on which a movie of same name was based) admits to same point, though she also mentions in the same book (Big Magic) that she would not shy away from editing if that was the only way to make a story publishable.
Before finishing off, I have a few words to add:
Does it really matter whether we make external rewards off of art? With writing (or any other creative process) there comes an intrinsic rewards for those who love to do it. Is that reward simply not enough? T
That is what I need to remind myself the next time I start thinking about if writing is a worthy investment of my time. At some point we grow up a bit too much and start seeing everything through the lens of return-on-investment.
