by Cynthia Light Brown
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| Harold Lehman, Renovo post office mural, "Railroad Repair" (1943) |
If you’re reading this, you’re a writer, or perhaps an
artist. You may not have sold any of your work anywhere, and you may not intend
to ever do so. But you are a writer, and it requires labor to bring the writing
forth.
Labor, of course, has another meaning - one I’ve been
through three times. Labor often comes in fits and starts, especially at the
beginning, but it eventually overtakes us, consuming every jot of energy and
focus. For nearly all of us, it takes us to the extremity of pain.
I hope your writing is not quite that painful. But I do hope
it absorbs your focus and energy, that at least at times, it overtakes you and
you’re lost in your characters, setting, plot, theme, that you live there in
your sleeping and eating and dreaming and in between spaces in your life.
For my own part, I have been absorbed in the hurly-burly of
family life lately – a good thing – but it’s time for me to sink into my
writing again.
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| Ralph Henricksen working on a mural for the Horace Mann's School, Chicago, as part of a WPA project in 1938. |
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