Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? — The Summer Day, Mary Oliver
What are the ingredients of a successful multigenerational farm, or ag business? Or book or film or other creative project? They have more in common than you might think.
It starts, I think, with the question above, posed by Pulitzer-prize-winning poet Mary Oliver. What do you really want to do with your life? Is this venture truly important to you? What, exactly, is your vision?
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Then, I think, it takes a bit of dreaming. Oliver was inspired to write The Summer Day after walking through the fields, observing nature. Walking seems to be an almost-universal tactic employed by poets, novelists and other scribblers to feed the creative fire.
I’m a novelist, as well as a farm journalist, and I find walking helpful for both types of writing. It’s very easy to get lost in details throughout the day, so a walk helps me get out of the nitty-gritty and re-approach my work with an eye on what I’m really trying to say or do with a particular piece of writing. I also know a lot of writers who like to get at least one sleep between a draft and revision, and I’ve found that helps with creative writing. I don’t always have time to do that with my day job, but even a small break from thinking about a piece helps.
I found it very interesting that business advisor Val Panko noticed that she got more calls from farmers who had cooked up interesting ideas after spending time in the tractor (see Dreamers versus Doers). Some may call it “idle time,” but I think our minds do deep work when we’re not hyper-focused on tasks or perhaps distracted by our phones. I think our subconscious is churning away, coming up with all kinds of things. It’s during these quieter times that the mind does some of its best work, generating creative ideas and solutions, and sending them up to our conscious mind.
I realize that may sound a bit woo-woo to some readers, but I firmly believe in the power of the more mysterious parts of the mind. I also firmly believe in the less-woo-woo part of creative labour, which involves honing craft and working in a disciplined way to achieve a goal. You cannot simply dream a novel into being, any more than you can imagine a crop into the ground, or the bin. Both require thought and planning, and hours of sitting in a chair/seat, doing the work. I think of writing a novel as digging a well, by hand. It’s hard, and it takes a long time, and you need to have some idea of what you’re doing. But if you keep at it, you will eventually hit water.
In the article mentioned above, inventor and ag entrepreneur Katlin Lang talks about how growing up on a ranch nurtured, among other things, the commitment to take a dream and see it through, even on tough days. Craig Macfie echoes this in his column on dwindling farm profits. Acknowledge the “brutal facts of your current reality,” he writes, but have faith that you will prevail in the end. He also writes of strategies to ensure you prevail, whether it’s through off-farm income, a commitment to continuous improvement, and dialing in your financial reporting and budgeting. Again, writers and farmers have a bit in common here. It’s almost impossible to earn a living solely from writing novels in Canada, no matter how well-received they are. But there’s satisfaction to be found in meeting the challenge, I think. Playwright Tennessee Williams, describing his life before fame and fortune found him, wrote it was “a life of clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding on tight with raw fingers to every inch of rock higher than the one caught hold of before, but it was a good life because it was the sort of life for which the human organism is created.”
So, what is the life story you’re creating for yourself?
