From the Wall O' Inspiration

I do most of my writing– and most of my work– since my day job is teaching online classes--sitting at a computer in my home office. I do have a laptop, but given my preference, I like a setup that feels more substantial--a big honking PC with a couple of screens, external speakers and a full-size keyboard. By today's standards I guess that makes me a bit old-fashioned. Of course I got through college using an actual honest-to-gosh typewriter, so this still feels pretty fancy to me.

Because of some peculiarities in the design of my house, sitting at the computer means I'm facing a wall that's about a foot behind my primary monitor. I'd prefer to be facing a window, but hey, I'm not the one who designed the wiring in here. Just above the level of my head (when sitting), the wall slopes sharply inward, following the roofline. So I don't have room for, say, a poster with a kitten clinging to a branch and telling me to "hang in there."

What I do have are three pieces of paper that I've taped to the wall in my eyeline. Most of the time, of course, my gaze just kind of skims past them, since they've become a part of the scene I just take for granted. Once in a while I do take conscious notice of them, though, and hopefully they provide a bit of inspiration or encouragement that's almost as good as the kitten poster.

Harlan Ellison producing

The first is a quote from Thomas Carlyle, though I got it from an essay by Harlan Ellison, the writer who made me want to be a writer. It reads:

PRODUCE! PRODUCE! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up! Up! Whatsoever thy hand findest to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is called Today; FOR THE NIGHT COMETH, WHEREIN NO MAN CAN WORK.

Cheerful, right? To put it in modern terms: get yer ass in the chair, kid, and your fingers on the keys.

The second scrap of paper is a passage from Rainer Maria Rilke, though again I cribbed it from a secondary source– in this case, the ending of Taika Waititi's 2019 film Jojo Rabbit. And it reads:

Let everything happen to you

Beauty and terror

Just keep going

No feeling is final.

This went up on the wall in the opening months of the COVID pandemic, when the world seemed like a pretty dark place and a reminder that it wouldn't be that way forever had daily value. These days, of course, all I have to worry about is creeping fascism, AI, and the possibility that we're about to invade Greenland, so everything is peachy.

The final piece of paper is the simplest. It's a single word, rendered in plain font:

REFINE

I put this up most recently, because it's a principle I've been thinking about a lot: refinement as a mode of living. It's long been part of my writing; I favor something of a sparse style, and there's nothing I love better than revising a piece of writing by carving away everything that is unneeded. I've been thinking that this isn't a bad way to approach most days: removing the things that aren't of value, that contribute no meaning. Doomscrolling, for example. Mindlessly surfing through YouTube. Distractions. "Refine" is meant to remind me to, whenever possible, make choices and take actions that are essential to the things I want to accomplish. I don't often actually accomplish it, of course, but it's something to aim for.

As for the desk itself, mostly it's cluttered with papers and mail I haven't yet dealt with--another thing I need to refine. There is, however, a small collection of rocks and shells from various trips I've taken, to remind me there's a world beyond that wall I'm facing. And there are also two Lego minifigures, there to remind me that what I should be doing is writing a crime story: Lego Shakespeare, and Lego Detective (complete with magnifying glass and red herring!).

So those are the things I've chosen to try to provide me with a bit of fortitude as I craft my little tales. What about you? Do you have inspirational images or words on your walls? How did you choose them, and what do they mean to you?

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