Obsession
Thursday, November 1, 2007
“If you aren’t obsessive,” writes Hanif Kureishi in HOW I WRITE, “you can’t be an artist, however imaginative you might be.”
Read that at 4:18 this morning and thought, okay, well, okay, feeling just a little better now. Because they called me obsessive in college, when I pinned all the poems I’d been writing to the wall above my bed. And they called me that wherever I went to work, as in, Give it to Beth, she’ll get it done, she’s obsessive. And (equally), Did you ever learn the word, relax?
No one used the word when I was a kid, filling black book after black book with poems (watercoloring the pages swirly colors first, so as to establish mood). Maybe they thought it, but nobody said it.
So maybe I read too hard (and still come up short for answers). So maybe I write too much (and have yet to write the perfect book). So maybe you find me talking to somebody and half of the time, we're talking about stories and words. I'm still not half the artist I want to be, but I'm drawing the conclusion right here, right now that being obsessive has its perks.
PS: Congratulations to Kristina (http://kristinasfavorites.blogspot.com/), who has won a copy of UNDERCOVER via a competition held by Em's Bookshelf (http://emsbookshelf.blogspot.com/). Thanks for all those who showed an interest!
