Refining

If today I decided that I wanted to build a beautiful wooden table, and I went to the woods with the dull ax and little saw that reside in our dusty tool box to cut down a tree, I would obviously have a big job ahead of me.

I’d start out by surveying the forest, and, using what few gut instincts I possess, I’d select my tree. After planning which way the tree should fall, I’d start in with the ax. After hacking away for awhile, I’d switch to the saw. After sawing for a while, I’d probably start feeling overwhelmed and consider bagging the whole table-making endeavor altogether. But then, I’d imagine the finished product as well as I could, and pick up my tools again.

After many laborious hours, my tree would finally fall. Hopefully I wouldn’t be standing in its path when this happened. I’d do a happy dance and feel excited that step one was finally over…I’d picked out and felled my tree! But then I’d realize that the real work had yet to begin.

Modern woodworkers have an arsenal of amazing tools at their disposal. These masters would breeze through the remaining steps, and in no time their table would be sanded, smoothed and polished…ready for public display. But at this point I have only the most rudimentary tools to work with. I am a century behind, technologically speaking, with just a few old fashioned hand tools, a dream, and a lot of grit to work with.

Removing limbs and bark would take days, but manually milling my log would be the longest part of the job. Pass after pass with a chisel, cutting it into lengths, and then and allowing it to cure would take forever. Finally the wood would be ready to work with. After assembling the pieces into the final product, I would spend hours upon hours going over the surface of my table, smoothing it with increasingly finer sand paper until it was ready for the first coat of varnish.

Building the same table that a master with the right tools could produce in a matter of hours would take me months of work, going over it again and again with increasingly finer tools, to at last reveal the beauty of the wood within.

Such it is with my writing. As an author, I feel like I’m in the process of just felling my first log right now. While some people are able to dash out the first draft, which requires going over just a couple more times to polish it, my writing takes pass upon pass to work out the kinks and get right. But I’m satisfied that with every effort, I am acquiring more tools, learning from my mistakes, refining my abilities.

I may never be a master writer, but I fully expect to someday find my voice and the ability to capture it without such great effort. While getting to that point will personally be very satisfying, I must admit I’m enjoying the journey. It’s a lot of hard, sweaty, gritty work, and it’s turning my life upside down in some ways, but every now and then I’m rewarded by producing something that I’m pleased with. Those moments make the rest of it all worthwhile.