“You must plough with such oxen as you have.” English Proverb
Love this pithy aphorism! It reminds us that we need look no farther than where we are and who we are to do the work at hand. Whether it’s ploughing a field in the sunshine or playing on the field of the page, we have everything we need right now to get the job done.
Consider the many gifts we can bring to the page, right now—today:
Purpose: We can come to the page with a purpose, a goal, an intention. It might be to capture and share our life lessons through a memoir. It might be to take an experience we’ve had and mold it into an essay. Or it might be to let our imaginations conjure up a whole new world in a novel or short story. Whatever that purpose is, it’s fuel we can tap into.
Focus: We have the power to bring laser-like intensity to our work. We can set aside the distractions that keep us from the page. We can create an environment that lets us bring all our energy to the page. We can remember that “Focus” stands for: “Follow one course until successful.”
Energy: We can gather ourselves and pour all our energy onto the page. We can bring zest and brio to our creative enterprise. We can tap into the “divine zeal” inside us and use it to animate our words—to make them come alive for our readers.
Joy: What greater gift can we have than to be free to do work we love? Work that enlivens and energizes us? Work that we find soul-satisfying? There is nothing more rewarding that’s grappling with something really difficult that you care about. And whenever we find time to write, we have the opportunity to wrestle with words and ideas. And it we stay strong and don’t give up, we become like Jacob in the Bible, who wrestled with an angel and was blessed.
We have so many gifts in our writer’s kitbag: Purpose. Focus. Energy. Joy. How lucky we are. We can surely plough our field with the oxen we have—and look forward to a fruitful harvest as we all write on!
Please help KWD grow by sharing: https://karinwritesdangerously.com/