A Good Kind of Problem to Have — Green River Pottery

I catch a lot, sometimes too many
- BD

I remember reading a little interview with a writer somewhere once, and she was giving her tips for success. How do you make time to write – how do you get a big book project completed?

Don't keep a journal. This was her top tip. You're never going to use it, no one will ever see it, and a journal takes up valuable time. Instead, just work on your big book project.

This advice really stuck with me since I do take up a lot of valuable time writing in a journal. No one will ever see it – isn't that the point? I thought it was 'useful' to have a place where you can just write down anything you want, anytime, and nobody will ever know?

Maybe. Ever since ninth grade I've debated this question, why do this, such a waste of time, writing a journal, how about I quit and use that same two hours at the desk to get emails done and bills paid and get ready for work — how about being on time for a change?

I go back and forth. I ponder, and over time a fair chunk of what I write (like now) is about writing itself. In the end I usually conclude that hmm it's kind of a good problem to have, the time-wasting journal, in which I have too many ideas (not really ideas, just thoughts, opinions) to transcribe each day. What would really be a problem would be not having any, and sitting there, not knowing what to say to your own journal.

That would be like going to the studio and not knowing what to make.

Along one edge of a worktable in there, in the studio, lying undisturbed for weeks at a time, I have a row of narrow strips of paper. Each has something listed on it that I'm supposed to make — some are commissions and some are ideas of my own that occur randomly while I'm doing something else (probably writing). Each strip of paper has to be the same size and shape so that they are equally weighted, so to speak — each potential project needs the same consideration, just as every day, from a journal-writing perspective, needs its thoughts and opinions translated. You can't pick and choose. On a good day in the studio I randomly approach the table & peer down at one of the strips. Hmm I better start working on those plates, I'll think, and I begin, and wedge clay, and throw plates, and the rest of the day disappears. Easy.

I have rows of old pots leaning up against the north side of the house, these are journal entries from other days, ideas & experiments with throwing or with glazes or a kind of form that I usually never make. These pots are not useful, and most are not good in themselves — they were necessary though, and personal, like any journal entry. I think back to the writer and her tips for success — I am always thinking back — I think that for those of us who are not ‘successful,’ just doing our work from day to day, wasting lots of time pursuing random private ideas is good. Better that than the big book project.

These last two images, above, are from tall planters that just came out of the kiln. They started as a strip of paper on that table in the studio & I wondered how they would work out with an improvised method for stacking two tall conical forms, partly because a big window in my house that stretches down close to the floor could really use some plants in front of it.

These days studio time for me is short & there is the usual race to complete commissions, fill the kiln, answer emails & be on time (I still struggle). So I make these observations mostly just to talk myself into this idea again — this thought — my best pots are always journal entries, for every five of them there are another four leaning against the north side of the house, it is best to embrace that overwhelming flow, there are always more ideas & pots I want to make than I actually ever do, I should keep sketching my unfinished & momentary insights, letting them emerge from the secret private transcriptions of the day (or night).