A Writing Analogy

Getting ready to write fiction is a lot like building a fire without matches.

I choose a patch of dusty earth in an airy but windless cove, then make a small mound out of twigs, dry leaves, steel wool, if I have it, lint, wood shavings, bits of bark...anything that will burn. (There is a quaint term for dry, flammable material: tinder.) Crouching into a ridiculously uncomfortable postion, I strike a steel blade against a splinter of flint over and over again, as rapidly as possible, until sparks begin igniting in quick succession. At first they are almost instantly, mysteriously extinguished. I begin to think that the tinder isn't dry enough or that I do not have the energy to continue, that I am becoming exhausted in the effort and should just go do laundry, when one spark lands on the edge of a withered leaf, which sends up an orange plume.

Quickly setting aside the stone and knife, I move the tendril of a dry weed to intersect the flame. Soon the whole mound is glowing, snapping, spitting, but I know that it it will burn out soon if I do not breathe on it to keep it alive. I must hover over it and give it air while blindly selecting combustible fodder from a secondary pile of wood close at hand. I lay pieces carefully on the fire, hoping not to smother the now flickering, now flaundering flame.

I coax it into a larger and larger conflagration, not wanting a bonfire or an inferno, exactly, but something small and warm that I can work with. On a good writing day, whole trees are reduced to powdery ash as I tend this fire, pausing from my task to rotate a log or stir coals.

Eventually, the fire is completely gone. Only a half dozen computer screens remain.