Draw, Antonio, Draw

I have started this blog post, in my head, about fifty different times in fifty different ways. As it will appear, today, is merely a shell of what it once was or could have been. For all the brilliant sentences I had pieced together, all the organizational structures, the flow, the transitions, and the seemingly brilliant connections with real life, only about twenty percent of it is still here with me. Maybe twenty-five. And that, right there, is the point of this entire post.

Annie Dillard, in her book The Writing Life, writes this:

"One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. 

"These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do no give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

"After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice, in the handwriting of his old age: 'Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.'"

I know there are hundreds of blog posts, dozens of book chapters, and a couple of decent essays that have passed to the graveyard of good intentions because I simply didn't sit down, right then, and get them down. I'll write it later tonight, I'd say, or this weekend, perhaps. Then I'll really have time to get it right. Instead, when I finally came to the keyboard, I couldn't find the words at all. The idea was still there somewhere, and the idea was worthy of writing. But I had no idea how to do it well, where the real words that communicated real truth had gone. The moment passed, the opportunity lost.

And this is how it is in life as well. How many great ideas have you and I let go, waiting for the right time to act on them? I've written many letters in my head, thought out many phone calls, created ministry ideas and lesson plans that seemed just right while mowing my yard. But then I didn't act. Not that day. And I have no idea where those ideas, those plans, and the inspiration behind them, have gone. How many students, players, and friends have I meant to encourage but didn't out of waiting for a better time?

For the good ideas, there is no better time than now. Now might not be convenient. Now might be rough. But later will always be much, much worse. Later it will become something else entirely, something much, much less.

Draw, Antonio, draw.