Writers and Creatives:
I know your struggle. I know your personal peril. I know what it is like to carry and ferry with you like a hermit crab carries and ferries its own personal residence this blossom and internal burden of: “The Work!”
Some pieces:
· Passion: I know what this feels like to you. I know the drive. The impulse. The press. The call. The weight. The optimism. The freedom
· Hope: I know what it’s like to hope that someone notices…notices and cares
· Lonely days and long nights: I know what it is like to toil and pound out pieces in the wee-early morning hours. I know what it is like to write far into the stretches of the night when all that can be heard is the click-clack of your typewriter keys
· Premonitions: I know what it is like when you see Visions of grandeur. I know what these are like and how they confound the reality of days spent in lack and years spent in utter invisibility
· When? I know what it is like to ask, ‘when is my turn’? I know what it is like to see others prosper and find their own version of, “Vanity Fair.” I know the feeling of almost desperation and almost exasperation of asking, ‘is this ever going to come my way’?
· Relentless and determined and stubborn as hell: I know what it’s like to press into the face of the fury and even insolence and mocking of your own family and friends and to shake these dust-bunnies off of your worn-out slippers and old sweat shirts and to keep plowing
· Completion! I know what it is like to see your WORK! Completed! I know what it feels like and the look of pure delight to see your body of work sitting all proud and dandied-up in front of you
My message to all of us…every, single one of us is: “Your Day is Coming!”
Your Day is Coming!
· Contracts will arrive
· Audiences will swell with emotion
· Accolades and awards with your name and work etched on them you will embrace
· Speeches and thank-you(s) filled with platitudes and humility will be your utterance
· Seeing your work in neon lights will flash on marquees around the globe
· Public recognition and public consumption and financial windfall will be your near and present gifts for all of the toil and years spent in basements and cramped quarters
· Silent internal confirmation will be your greatest prize for you will know it was all worth it
Your Day is Coming!
Stay the course. Write your sonnets not in sand but in stone. Live into the beauty and the tremors and the holiness and the ugliness and the brilliance and the dizziness that is the creative process.
Travel Far.
Steve Bonenberger,
Shepherd to Creatives Everywhere