One day, there will be gold. There will be happiness, and the sun will throw its affectionate, golden strokes on all of us. I’ve thought of this sentence every day since I wrote it, of how I had written it almost instantly, a split-second, as I sat to write the other day. I still don’t know what to follow it with—this is how the muses work. Unlike what most people might know or think, there is no divine intervention. If you sit by the window to write when you wake up, the muses show up, and they softly whisper into your ear, but that’s all. It’s an idea, an inkling, a feeling on most days. If you’re lucky, and if they like you, it’s a complete sentence. I was lucky that day; I was the chosen one.
What after the idea? You get to work. You get to the slog. And like how a rope must continue pulling buckets of water out of a well, over and over again, until it breaks, you must pull everything out, repeatedly, until you die. There is no other way to do this, and if someone told you there was, they lied to you. Ask any of the greats; they will tell you how it is all about sitting with the thought, and writing, and thinking, and writing, and doing it in such a way that each time you write about it, there is something new. Writing is more like mining than it is like painting—you keep digging. You dig when you’re talking to others; you dig when you’re walking; and when you’re working some job to pay for your bills and get the bathroom light fixed.
It happens rarely, but there are instances when you strike gold, when the Earth sounds different as you hit it, and you know. You know in your heart this is it. This is the sentence I’ve been searching for; I’ve dug for days in the hope of finding it. There it is; I’ve struck gold. Then, the summer sun starts to shift towards the evening, and a blade of light falls on your foot near the window. And suddenly, you understand. One day, there will be gold. There will be happiness, and the sun will throw its affectionate, golden strokes on all of us. There it is; I see it now.