Why’d You Go and Do That, Caleb? Pablo D’Stair asks and I ask Pablo.
Pablo D’Stair simply doesn’t stop. He has recently begun yet another project. His Why’d You Go and Do That? series asks authors to confess to a long hidden secret, and subsequently answer a few questions about how that secret may have forged the author’s thematic sensibilities. This guy has so much going on that he’s basically become his own online school. Though I hope this trend of uncomfortable confession doesn’t take over his entire curriculum; someone will likely be calling HR.
Head over to the Why’d You Go and Do That? site to read my confession, my answers, Pablo’s confession, and his answers to my questions. Here’s a taste:
So, first thing I’d like to ask—coming at less the full on subject matter here, but one of your set-up points—is whether you feel in your desire to write some drive to eventually “be free of the tedium of a job” so to speak—do you, at this time, earnestly find time-at-work to be time-away from-writing? And to further a bit, do you think if you didn’t have to work, if you were set-up, well-to-do, that you would fill that time with writing, with active pursuit of your literature? I’ve always been good with having a job, myself, never really (principally) found it as something that takes away from writing and I’ve met some people who I think kind of say they think working is a drain, but really that’s just something they say (as in, I doubt if they didn’t have to work they’d really produce any more or less). Ideally, do you think writing, or any art, is something that should have room to breathe, space, time, something built of a life without such concerns as dayjobs and all? A lot of questions, so answer
however you like—I guess it boils down to “Do you think time away from writing, required time away, is the enemy of writing?”
For a long time I thought of my dayjob simply as something I do between bouts of writing. I’ve realized, fairly recently, that my position on the dayjob was due primarily to me having a shitty one. Now, I’m actually quite content and often find myself letting dayjob duties infringe in what would traditionally be considered my writing time. I hope this is not a testament to an eventual takeover of the dayjob stuff, wherein the writing would dissipate completely. I’m sure it isn’t; writing means too much to me.
More to your question, I know, quite for sure, that should I be given all day to write I wouldn’t use the day in that way. I work best with a balance of outside obligations and writing struggle. If writing were all I had to do, I wouldn’t have any other option to oppose. We need conflict. People need to work in order to appreciate their off-time. I need my job to appreciate my writing time. Required time away therefore might be quite the opposite of the enemy; it could be the best possible mate.
