Writing as an Art (Devotion)

Writing as an Art (it’s called Devotion)

How should a writer write? Or in my case, perhaps how should a poet write? He should write as if he will have a coronary occlusion tomorrow, or he is doing his art wrong. He has a responsibility to his art, and it demands compete pitiless love and devotion, as if he was a soldier and it is life or death. Someone told me once and I didn’t’ say a word, I remained silent, and went about my business, after he told me what he told me, which was, “It’s impossible to write more than three hours a day.” And he was a writer, well kind of a writer, not a writer of art, but a writer of fiction that did sell, but will be thrown off the shelves next year, never make it to the libraries, maybe, but I doubt it. I call it literature made like a chain of hamburgers. He belonged to the new cult, get it out. It takes me three hours to warm up, to get focusd, to get my breathing right, to get on a roll. I ask my wife, so I would not lie to you folks reading this, how much do I read and write a day, seven days a week, take or give a day for rest, once every three or four months, she said, “Between eight to ten hours a day.” I fall to sleep at the computer, or reading my books; I perhaps write 900 to 3000 words a day, depending on my reading, and research, and those episodes falling to sleep. I might be ruthless as I said, but I do believe in one exception to this ruthless life: God first, my wife next, and that is were it stops, I’m somewhere in-between God and Wife, I think after God and wif.
The writer, or artist has a dream, and it kills him, anguishes, him, torments him, obsesses him in his sleep, eating time, so I carry two pens, in case I lose one, and napkins to write, so I don’t lose an idea, the name of the game is get rid of the throne in the side, the torment, write it down, look at it later. It is like writing a book, don’t worry about this and that just write it out, and fix it later, before you lose it all and have nothing to fix later. What is the end of it, you should know, why? How you going to write a plot, have a theme, carry an insight to its end unless you do, you can’t start a poem in one style, and say in the middle: I think I’ll change this to anther style, it don’t work that way, same as in a story, if you change the plot in your story, in the middle, you change the rhyme for the reader and you owe the reader something more than a bumpy road ?
So you see, when you write you get no peace until you write out what is taking that peace away from you. Simple isn’t it. Life needs to be experienced, grant you that, but when you are on a project, everything goes into file 13, until everything in your head (my head) is empty, and thereafter, go back to file 13, and empty the garbage out on the floor, and take out what you want, because everything, almost everything, is second. If it isn’t, then writing is not an art to you, it’s a hobby. Especially in writing poetry, you don’t rob Peter to pay Paul, you may rob both of them, but no one gets paid until you finish the project, paid in the sense of money or finishing a project just to finish it, and of course you want it to get out to be read, that comes second also, or not at all.