“Art, it seems to me, should simplify.  That, indeed, is nearly the whole of the higher artistic process; finding what conventions of form and what detail one can do without and yet preserve the spirit of the whole—so that all one has suppressed and cut away is there to the reader’s consciousness as much as if it were in type on the page.  Millet had done a hundred sketches of peasants sewing grain, some of them very complicated and interesting, but when he came to paint the spirit of them all into one picture, “The Sower,” the composition is so simple that it seems inevitable.  All the discarded sketches that went before made the picture what it finally became, and the process was all the time one of simplifying and sacrificing many conceptions good in themselves, for one that was better and more universal.”

Willa Cather
 

Pretty Cool! -- MV

I’m not a violent person, but given the chance I’d hang the men who invented the Internet and the leaf blower.  Subtract these two things from my life and my days would be a marvel of efficient, peaceful productivity. 

Instead the World Wide Web sounds its siren call the moment my mind butts up against a sticking point.  One little click and I’m caressed by endlessly seductive distractions.  No need to toil Odysseus.  Join us.  Stay a while.  Stay longer. 

By the time I stop clicking through Yahoo’s top ten destinations for a mid-winter get-away, ten years have passed and I’m still staring at the same paragraph I clicked away from, staring so hard and so long that after another ten years the words might order themselves like hard working ants back into whole thoughts.

But wouldn’t you know it.  The moment thoughts start to form the leaf blower man flicks his switch.  Goodbye ants.  Goodbye thought. 

Seriously, how is the leaf blower an improvement over the rake?  I get the Internet.  It has its uses.  But even the leaf blower man must prefer a rake to that roaring contraption strapped to his back.  There aren’t leaves enough to justify that sound.  What harm are those leaves doing anyway?  If they are such a nuisance, then, (forgive me mom….you know I don’t really mean it!), but cut down the tree: a crash, bang, one-shot-job with a chainsaw.  Imagine how much fuel we’d save in the long run, and any depletion in ozone would be surely be balanced by considerable loss of noise pollution. 

Then, you see, then I could get back to work.   Then I would be able finish this paragraph, line, scene, story...

*Cartoon Above: Copyright © 2009 BECK*Cartoons | All rights reserved
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 Check out this article about one of my writing mentors, Rosemary Graham, and I.  Rosemary you rock!  I'm so lucky to have found you.  If I had one wish for that genie in the magic lamp, it would be that teachers everywhere would be honored for the work they do for students, rather than blamed for failures that are too often the result of difficult social and financial circumstances. 

The Craft of Mentorship-By Ben Peterson