Writing Berries Have the Juiciest Syntax (Photo Credit: Wikipedia)
Strawberry season is in full bore on the California coast. Today I drove back from a beach walk past fields filled with pickers, backs bent, boxes at their side. Because I live right across from acres of strawberries, the labors of the laborers aren’t far from my mind.
Here in my home office, a box of another sort—a computer—defines my workspace. I bend over the keyboard, straightening when the consciousness of ergonomic violation rings in my brain—or in my back. I have the luxury of being able to look out of my window at the pickers, and to look back into the window of my screen, and think about the nature of work.
I’ve been a freelancer for many years now, and I should be accustomed to the harvest of my vocation. But it still seems odd to me that this gossamer fruit—an electronic window painted with language—is what I exchange for my daily bread. It seems so removed from “real” work, work that results from your body’s toil, or work that produces a tangible thing.
It’s easy to scorn this slant, which has a seeming smack of the patronizing in it—sure, here’s a guy who gets to sit at home all day, drumming up some artificial envy for work that is ill-paid—and that sometimes results in ill workers. But there’s something about the substance of work done by the motion of the body that has a different kind of reward than that done by the motions of the mind. Admittedly, it’s a luxury to be in the position to even ponder the differences.
The Bricks and Mortar of Creative Connection
I think my true worker’s envy might be toward those people that can build things, and touch them after the building. That process seems a true creative connection, a thing conceived and then a thing concrete. It has to be a pleasure to be a carpenter who passes by houses or buildings he or she has worked on, and who can say, “I made that.” I’ve always been amazed by people that can build, whether it’s a cabin or cabinet.
I’ll always be grateful to my mother, who taught me the love of reading, and my father, who taught me the love of athletics, and to the both of them for revealing that the world can provoke laughter. However, my upbringing didn’t urge that craftsperson’s understanding, where your fingers gain a native appreciation for constructing the objects of this world. I didn’t pick up the building skills that many kids learned—and I didn’t go out and learn them on my own. I’m much better with a dishtowel than a hammer. In work as in play, it does seem we’re all jealous of the other person, but if it’s any consolation, they’re probably jealous of us.
Many are the times that I’ve griped about not hearing back from an editor on a story pitch, or tugged hard on my hair when I can’t bring to life on the page a character that shines in my mind. However, it takes some real effort to credibly mope over most aspects of my own vocation. I hope it’s not some lame wishful thinking to think of working with words as a kind of carpentry: stories are crafted of words, the hammers and nails that build a tale. Some stories have strong joints, some weak. All stories have foundations, good and bad. There’s pleasure in seeing a story’s sinews, running your mind’s eye over its rough spots, calculating how much more cement is needed to settle a paragraph.
Writing Has Its Harvests Too
Here in the small hills, the strawberry season is at its midpoint; there will be workers in the fields for months to come. I wonder if the same workers will return again for the new plantings, if they look forward to another season of these pretty hills and ocean breezes. Or if it’s just all backbreaking drudgery, surrounded by stories of Silicon Valley successes, which boggle the imaginations of people sweating to stay alive.
I hope not. I still remember my own forays into orchard labor, from many summers of picking apples. So long ago, but I still carry the memory of the crisp explosion of flavor and the sharp gratification gained from munching orchard apples at 6am at the beginning of a long summer day. It’s hard to forget the tang of homemade applesauce made for the first time, and the fine feeling I had picking the final apple of a harvest season. But I knew it was only another summer’s labor, and that my future didn’t lie in those trees. Other workers aren’t so lucky. I hope the strawberry workers still feel some satisfaction in those long workdays, and that the strawberries still taste sweet.
I’ll try to look more for the writing berries, and to remember to savor the labor.
Tom, you are a builder! You build characters and stories. It’s a two-dimensional building on the screen or on the printed page, but three-dimensional in our minds. And because of the type of building that you do, you have the pleasure and honor of building something that will outlive you. You never have to go back and replant what you harvested at the end of last season.
I was gloriously blessed by learning both words and craftsmanship from my father. I’m not a boatbuilder as he was, but I can build a functional bookcase, and the footstool I use with my comfy chair is a box I build when I was 15.
A dear friend casually mentioned, the second time I visited his beautiful country home, that he built it himself. Every board, all the plumbing and electric bits, from his own design. I’d known him as a stunning guitarist. Learning he was a craftsman of the first order instantly added depth to my appreciation of our friendship.
Jule, I love the sense of three-dimensionality in the mind! No wonder my head feels so heavy sometimes. Lovely way to express it.
There are goods and bads on leaving behind things that will outlive me (as you know, I sometimes can’t help but write some pretty silly things), but I appreciate the spirit with which you offer the advice.
And it makes me want to work all the more on leaving something worthy behind.
Joel, I do envy those abilities, but apparently not enough to do anything about it. My father was the master of fixing things with duct tape, but he didn’t go in much for sawing and hammering. Of course, I could have taken some wood shop classes in high school, but since that’s when my interest in psychedelic substances accelerated, I probably would have lost an arm.
It is amazing to see the things people can do: I have a friend who took apart and rebuilt a vintage Jaguar engine, and the damn thing ran afterwards. He did the same thing with a vintage Triumph motorcycle. Oh well, at least I can trounce him playing one-on-one basketball…
A cherrystone clam could beat me at basketball.
Yes, Joel, but you could barbecue that clam with a fine sauce afterward, and you’d have the last laugh. And the last bite.
This post has my mind going in many directions. I think of my dad who was forced to take college prep classes in high school, even though he preferred wood and auto shop. Or my mom, who was forced to take home ec classes even though sewing and cooking weren’t her thing. She passed her classes because she could fix a sewing machine or typewriter like nobody’s business, so the nuns cut her some slack. I think of my grandfather who told me, in Spanglish, that he was glad I was attending college because he wanted me to work with this (points to his head) and not these (holds out his hands). I know what you mean about writing. It does feel weird to sit with my laptop for hours on end and call it “work.” But I love the process of seeing something through from start to finish, whether it be a piece of writing (oh, how I love pressing the send or publish buttons) or a project like sewing clothes for my kids’ stuffed animals. (I was interrupted numerous times while writing this, so I kinda lost my train of thought….great post!)
Christine, amusingly enough, I took a home ec class in high school. I actually sewed a shirt—and must have tried to start a new fashion trend, because one shoulder was distinctly lower than the other. I also remember the “add ice cubes to the water to more quickly make jello” trick. Martha Stewart, step back!
I’m with you all the way on seeing a piece of writing from its birth to sending it out into the world, hoping its pants are pressed. That is a fine thing, and an act of creation, without having to waffle about whether it’s “real” work or not.
Thank you for sauntering by and leaving your mark.
Since words are the principal means by which we carry out conscious thought, you, Tom, are engaged in the most important species of work there is.
Good of you to say Rick. Those words sometimes are in goodly need of a shave and a shower though, because occasionally my conscious thought is rather that of a cave-dweller.
We are all working with words down here in the smithy, banging away. Sometimes what’s struck on the anvil rings true.
My brother siphoned off all the mechanical ability from our sibling gene pool. He can build, rebuild and fix pretty much anything. So I relate to your feelings of awe and envy for such talents.
Maybe you can’t build an engine from scratch. And OK, you spend your work day in the comfort of the Airstream, rather than toiling in the strawberry fields.
But the filling, sweet and tart fruits of your labor have made me think and feel today.
There’s substance in that, I believe.
Annie, please send your brother over to tile my shower. (And to scrub my back, while he’s at it.)
But I do appreciate the thought that my words can make the machinery of some minds (hearts too!) turn fluidly and even fondly.
Or, if the words sometimes make the mind chains jump their gears, that whatever chaos ensues, it’s your higher-quality—Brighter whites! Darker darks!—chaos, and not the used, bruised or “who cares?” variety.
Tom,
I enjoyed your metaphor and wit. Like you, I sometimes feel that “head” work is not as real as the “hand” work of those who put in many hours of physical labor and for less pay. Both have honor and harvest.
When I was in high school my counselors had a one-track mentality. Students were either college bound or trade bound. One semester I enrolled myself in an art class, but before I could get settled in my seat the first day, my counselor marched in and promptly pointed me to exit the room. I was in the college bound group and banned from nonacademic classes. Throughout my life I’ve balanced my left brain career of teaching and writing, with right brain activities such as cooking and crafts. It has always made sense to me to use both sides of my brain.
Flora, “both have honor and harvest”—wise words. And using both sides (and the back, front and middle) of the brain is the best way to keep that thing from getting dusty. I do admire the writer who’s also a cook!
Thanks for the warm words.