Waiting is a big part of the writing game. Waiting for inspiration to strike. Waiting for a character to speak. Waiting until a story is finally right.
Writing a novel takes patience. The worst part, at least for me, is waiting to hear back from publishers.
Times like that, I’ll throw myself into torturous physical work that makes me forget all about Olshan the writer, and returns me to a more natural state: Olshan the caveman.
Last week, this meant digging post holes in some fine Perry County mud.
One thing we’ve learned about our back yard is that it’s wet. The groundwater is high — within two feet of the surface in most places.
The high water table was surely one of the key attractions for the settlers who built our house at the turn of the 19th century. In fact, there’s still a hand-dug well out back. We considered filling it in, but it’s nice to know there’s a nearby source of water in case of emergency. We wouldn’t want to use it without boiling it first, but we figure it has to be cleaner than the water in Shermans Creek a few hundred yards away.
The well brings us peace of mind, but there are downsides to living on top of so much water.
Digging post holes, for instance.
Digging in clay isn’t the best post-holing experience, but it’s far from the worst, as anyone who has dug in rocky ground will tell you. Even so, digging in clay in early spring, when water fills the hole, moistening the clay into a diabolical glue, has been known to turn an otherwise rational person — I won’t mention any names here — into a howling maniac.
If you’ve ever dug post holes in wet clay, you’ll be familiar with the smoldering rage that fills your shoulders as you try to clear the blades of the post-hole digger, first by tamping them against the ground, then by pounding them against a rock, and finally being forced to kneel down, with each new stroke of the tool, and use your fingers to claw away the filthy dripping stuff, all the while raving at the mud as if it just sent you a rejection letter.
My recent post-hole digging was actually going rather well, although you wouldn’t have guessed by the way I was screaming, “Get off! Get off!” at that stubborn clay. I was hitting my depths, despite the fact that my mucking boots were literally being sucked off my feet.
Then, on the last hole — wouldn’t you know it — I ran into trouble. First, there was debris.
Debris can be exciting. Digging behind an old house, there’s always the chance you’ll find something archeologically interesting.
Unfortunately, the debris was all bona-fide Late-Twentieth-Century Kitchen Trash.
Kitchen trash is really no big deal in a post hole. But a huge piece of cut limestone is!
I patiently dug around that behemoth, widening the hole until it threatened to swallow me up. There wasn’t much for my digging bar to bear against — I was practically working in quicksand — so it came down to bailing the hole with a bucket, and then working around the stone with my bare hands, elbow deep in icy water, until I managed to maneuver it out of the way.
But the fun wasn’t over. A few inches further down, I hit an old board, which, in a way, is worse than hitting a rock. Old boards can be very long, so digging around them doesn’t always work.
The only way through it was to, well, go through it.
Which is how I found myself standing over a huge mud pit, hurling a digging bar with all my might against a petrified two-by, grunting like a feral pig with each bone-jarring impact.
This went on for a long, long time.
Was it good training for an Athenian hoplite? Yes.
Was it an amusing spectacle for my daughter and her visiting friend? Maybe.
Was I thinking about publishers as I smashed through that stubborn plank?
I’ll let you be the judge.
This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 08 April 2010
For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com
