Speaking of Writing

"Work of the eyes is done now/go and do heartwork..." (Rainer Maria Rilke)

I love this quote. You can find it in various forms online; depending on the translation, people seem to break the line in different places. Sometimes you'll find it as "done now...go" and sometimes as "done...Now go" and though those nuances make a subtle bit of difference, both seem to work.

What I love about it is the way it clearly shows the need for both "eyework" and "heartwork" when you're writing. "Work of the eyes" is necessary -- we need to look and look and look some more, and store up all we see. But there comes a time when the looking stage reaches some sort of end, and we find ourselves needing to do "heartwork" on the images we've seen. The last part of the quote is actually something like "go and do the heartwork on the images imprisoned within you." Although that speaks to me too (especially the idea that the work of writing has to do with freeing) I don't think that all the images we begin with are necessarily imprisoned. A better description for me might be embyronic. The images are like seeds, the "heartwork" involves digging, plowing, planting, nourishing, watering, and all the other many things one does to encourage growth and blooms.

Sometimes the images we begin with in the eyework stage are actual ones, things and people we've seen as we've explored the world. Sometimes the images are born in our imagination, including the images and characters that we're given as gifts. But once we have the image firmly fixed in our mind, it can't just sit there. We need to get it to the page, then begin to wrestle with it and create something that is born not only of close observation or creative imagining, but of the deepest parts of our hearts and what we believe about the story...the one we're telling, the one we're living in, and how those intersect.

Work of the eyes, work of the heart. Eyework, heartwork. Both utterly necessary, and both arduous tasks. I'm rediscovering that right now as I try to step back into the creative work of writing fiction. So far I've mostly dangled my toes, cautious about the water below. Pretty soon I need to dive.