Repetition
Flannery O’Connor called it the habit of art, the practice of sitting down daily to write and develop an idea that is never precisely the same. What about the repetition of winter days – of the winter blahs? I was speaking to someone today who told me that she went home with a six pack of beer and cigarettes and even the simple pleasure of cracking open a cold can of beer and lighting up a smoke did not win her over, so she opted to curl up on the sofa and watch a movie instead.
What if you are have repeatedly done the same thing for more than a decade and the thing itself dies inside of you? How does that develop into a work, much less a work of art? Bach endlessly toiled on those fugues, repetition, repetition, repetition. Poets endlessly turned a phrase, a word. What if the repetition is actually something you need to put a halt to – stop, stop, stop.
How do you make lemonade from lemons that have gone sour?