Digging Up Chapters and Short Stories

One of my favourite poets of all time is the winner of the Noel Prize in Literature (1995) Irish Literary Legend, Seamus Heaney. Whereas another great legend Ted Hughes wrote the poem 'The Thought Fox' to describe how he goes about writing a poem, Heaney wrote the poem 'Digging' to describe his choice to be a poet, instead of following his father's footsteps, digging for peat in an Irish bog.

For copyright reasons, I cannot reproduce the entire Heaney poem, but I can give you a few lines to get my point across. Heaney writes of how well his father could handle a spade.

"By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man..."

But Heaney has no intention of following the family occupational line. For the young Seamus, instead of picking up a spade and digging up peat with it, he decided to choose a pen to dig up poems.

"Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun."

Those first two lines are followed by seven highly descriptive verses about Heaney's father digging up the bog. Then comes the last verse...

"But I’ve no spade to follow men like them...

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it."

It was this analogy that crossed my mind when this afternoon, amidst organizing material for some new books I have decided to publish. As I sat on the porch, overlooking a farmer's field full of Taro Potato, watching the farmer digging the earth, I realized that what I do as a writer with my pen, is not too dissimilar to what my agricultural farmer neighbour does with his spade.

Over the past few months, I have been prolifically writing all manner of short stories and chapters for the various Vocal Media challenges. So far, I have not won any prizes. However, what I have gained is quite a large crop of chapters and short stories. And these last few days I decided to harvest those crops for publication.

After the harvest, the farmer will take his vegetable crops to a middleman wholesaler. I shall take my literary crops to a middleman publisher. Meanwhile, we will both be re-seeding our respective fields with new material for the season to come.

My occupation is no less worthy than that of the farmer, nor his less worthy than mine. He toils to feed the body, I toil to feed the mind. They are both graceful, dignified, and honourable activities.

I suppose one big difference is that the farmer gets physically dirty and tired. I stay physically clean and get mentally tired. Another difference is that the farmer's crop is a one-hit gift of a harvest, mine is the gift of a harvest that keeps on giving.

However, what we both have in common is a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment at having produced something to show for all of our toils. And for that, we can both put our feet up at night to take a well-deserved rest.

I don't suppose there is any Nobel Prize for growing Taro Potato, but if there was one, my farmer neighbour would surely win it. He's a smart farmer too. He plants an area big enough for him to harvest piecemeal throughout the coming months. Like me, he works the hours that suit him.

Unlike me, I don't suppose he gives a second thought to what I might do with my days. I have done a little farming myself in the south of Spain, in temperatures of forty degrees Celsius. It is bloody hard work. As a result, almost every day I find myself concerned for the well-being of my elderly neighbour, on his hands and knees with his wide-brimmed straw hat and hardy gloves grubbing around in the dirt.

Like Seamus Heaney, I prefer to use my pen to dig, rather than a spade, any day of the week.