Reading a collection of letters of Ralph Ellison, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I can defintiely see a diference between the greats and where I am, and that’s time.

Some of these letters go on, taking their time to set a scene, lay out a point, a veritable warm up to a skillful deployment of words. You never get the sense that he’s in a hurry, or he’s just wrting to write. 

I have a lot of ideas. Lot of things I want to do and share…but I cannot, for the life of me, slow down. I cannot spend more than an hour doing anything resembling taking my time. 

Part of it is that I forget things if I’m in the middle of something else. If I have four ideas, and start working on one, I’ll forget at least one of those ideas I had; it’s just how I’m wired. I take copious notes, but something gets through the cracks every time. Writing somehting, drawing something…doesn’t matter.

The letters I write have nowhere close to a portion fo class, wit, and feeling of completeness as Ellison’s, and while that’s not a surprise, his mountaintop of excellence seems very far away from where I am.

Maybe, with this year, I’ll learn to slow down. I’ll learn to be more…patient? Deliberate? Something. First is to acknowlege, second is to bring a plan of action into…action.