Weaving The Dream

Last weekend, my husband and I watched a movie my aunt recommended to me, “You Kill Me.”  Ben Kingsley stars as a Polish alcoholic hitman from Buffalo whose drinking inevitably ends up causing him problems “on the job.”  The mob sends him to San Francisco to dry out, with interesting consequences for everyone.

In the opening scene, it is winter in Buffalo (i.e. snow up to your …) and Kingsley’s character, Frank, is in his kitchen drinking from a bottle of vodka that he puts down long enough to put on a coat and hat.  He picks the bottle up, opens his front door, steps outside, takes a slug or two from the bottle, caps it, looks carefully, and then tosses the capped bottle down the steps into the snow. 

Frank shovels down the steps until he gets to the bottle, picks it up, uncaps it and takes a few more slugs, caps the bottle, and then tosses it farther along the walk.  He shovels more snow until he once again arrives at the bottle and then repeats the process all over again.

Isn’t that a great image or metaphor for the power of motivation?

Frank knew himself well enough to realize that if he was going to get all that snow shoveled, he needed motivation.  Granted the motivation was an addiction, but because he wanted that vodka badly enough, he shoveled quickly and efficiently to get to it, several times over.

Motivation is important for creativity.  How badly do I want to get my books written?  If I want to write—and sell—a book, then I have to be willing to shovel the snow, to do the work to make it happen.  Then I can drink in (don’t moan, it’s a good pun) the feeling of achievement and success.

Whether it means doing research, planning story structure, or ultimately, sitting down and putting one word after another, I have to do the work.  I have to be willing to dig in and pick up shovelful after shovelful of words.  A writing friend of mine recently commented to me on how much fun it is to come up with the idea and storyline for a novel, but how much work, how even painful it is to sit down and actually write the story.  Yes, it can be backbreaking, painful, exhausting work.

But how badly do I want it?  How badly do you?  If you want to see that story in print, hear that composition performed by an orchestra, see that landscape hanging on the wall, you have to want it enough, desire it enough with your whole self to do the work.

The scene also reminds us that it is a good idea to reward ourselves along the path of our hard work.  The creative project can require weeks, months, or even years of our creative time and energy before its completion, so treating ourselves along the way to some of the things that nourish our creativity can keep us going.  You know—like dark chocolate, a hot bath, reading a good book, watching a darkly humorous movie like “You Kill Me,” going for a walk—little rewards, little sips here and there, to keep us going.

So plan some rewards along the way, remind yourself how badly you want to see that completed project, and start shoveling.  And tell me, what keeps you motivated?

And while you are doing that, I am going to go see if I can get my husband to massage my back!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Writing, Creativity, Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.