Ultimatum

If I buy one more book on how to write,
And add it, still unopened, to my shelf,
And still neglect to take the time to write —
Yes, the part where I sit at the keyboard —
I should lock down my Amazon account
And plan to donate the money I would
Have spent on such books to a better cause,
Such as a charity for homeless dogs
(My dog now looks at me with grave concern);
Or a fund to supply kids with backpacks
Filled with enough school supplies for a year;
Or, finally, start that Kiva account
And lend the same twenty-five dollars to
People who’ll use the cash to change their lives.
It might make sense to spend money on books
That will show me how to do something that
I do not already know how to do,
But I have enough of those already
And no extra time to learn the new skills.
It’s best to focus on the skills I have.
Besides, I don’t need a book to tell me
That I should sit down every day to write —
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know.
What I need is permission from myself
To make that time be for me, every day,
When I sit down and try to beat the muse
To the punch, or to the punchline or the
Deadline, or to the death of the traitor
Muse, if it knows the key that will unlock
All the doors to my creativity
But refuses to tell me where it is.

There are no shortcuts to the ten thousand
Hours that you must put in to master
The skill that you would like to focus on;
This breaks down to four hundred and sixteen
(And a bit more) twenty-four-hour days.
Maybe one should allow time for sleeping.
To go to another extreme, you could
Plan to spend only one hour per day
On your chosen skill; you would reach your goal
After twenty-seven years and four months.
Perhaps there’s a goal somewhere in between
That would allow an apprentice, of sorts,
To come up to speed at a quicker pace.
Or a multivariate equation
That would calculate with accuracy
How many hours need be spent writing
On the weekdays as opposed to weekends.
Yet it’s not as if an alarm goes “ding”
When the ten-thousand hour quota is met.
I think the real goal is to find the thing
That brings me to the keyboard every day,
So that writing gets easier with time
And that I get more quickly to the place
Where I can see the work of the next day
And it doesn’t feel like work any more,
And I stop keeping track of the numbers.

“Words on a Page” by Timothy Neill