The Rabbit Hole

One of my favorite books about writing is Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, his posthumously published memoir about his years in Paris as a young man. It was the first book I’d read that I felt fully captured the pleasures and challenges of writing, though one line always both bothered me and stayed with me. Hemingway was describing the need for discipline if you want to write, and how you can’t let your life’s problems get in the way of your work. Besides, he went on, “Work solves everything.” I don’t care if the guy won the Nobel Prize, I thought, nothing solves everything. I was a young man myself when I first read the book. I’d had my share of problems and did not think work alone could possibly have solved all of them. Though even as I thought this, I could not remember what had solved them. Problems were strange that way. They seemed in those days to appear and disappear like unwanted party guests, cluttering up the conversation with their complaints and accusations, until mysteriously, quietly, without ever being asked to leave, they were gone.

Then recently I was having one of those days a writer sometimes has. I had agreed to write six essays about Fearless Writing for an online tutorial. Unfortunately, I had just written a whole book on the subject, and was finding the work boring. On this particular day, as I looked about at my little world, all my interests felt like chores and all my chores felt like slave labor. Life, apparently, had become chewing gum chewed past its flavor. Plus, all the news on the TV was bad. People killed each other and screamed at each other. Also, people bought all the wrong books.

I decided I would write the next essay as if I’d never written about fearless writing before. I didn’t care if it contradicted everything I’d written in the book; there was just no point in doing anything if it wasn’t any fun. Before long, a New Idea arrived. Just what I’d been looking for, I thought, and followed it. Down the rabbit hole we went, and the old world was forgotten because the new one was so interesting.

I’m not sure how much time I spent in the rabbit hole, ten minutes or two hours. Time changes down there. Eventually, the Idea and I had wound our way back to the surface. When I emerged, I sat for a moment, back in my chair, in my room, in this world, and I tried for a moment to remember my problems from earlier that day. I couldn’t. Papa was right, I concluded, and left my office, to return to my very interesting life.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual and group coaching.