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“After a few months’ practice, David lamented to his teacher, ‘But I can hear the music so much better in my head than I can get out of my fingers.’ To which the Master replied, ‘What makes you think that ever changes?’

That’s why they are called Masters. When he raised David’s discovery from an expression of self-doubt to a simple observation of reality, uncertainty became an asset. Lesson for the day: vision is always ahead of execution- and it should be.”

“Art and Fear” David Bayles & Ted Orland

Above was a small part of what I got a chance to read this afternoon. It was a great reminder for me.

My vision is never one cohesive whole, it’s little snapshots. It’s the piecing it all together into something cohesive and digestible. I think that’s what makes it mostly hard to bring my visions to reality. The other things are time and money. My visions can be quite extravagant and time consuming. So in my head, I see it but once it comes to doing the work it’s much larger than I anticipated.

“How am I going to do this?”

How we respond to this is what separates creators from others. It’s the question we ask as humans when we’re faced with uncertainty. Let’s bring the book back in. So in the book they eventually say, “Uncertainty is a virtue.” And isn’t that so true for artists. Because someone who isn’t inspired by any chance they get to create, would be overwhelmed when approached with this question but an artist pulls out their tool kit and starts knitting away.

I wanted to make sure I took the time to remind all the creators out there, that we are virtuous with our relationship with uncertainty and it’s a gift. Uncertainty, a lot of times, is considered by Joseph Campbell to be the call that if accepted takes you deeper into your hero’s journey.

I think it’s a good time to appreciate that gift you hold. It separates you from the rest.

No matter what they say, writing is for everyone. Not everyone is a Nobel prize winner or author of the top selling book on Amazon. But everyone is welcomed to open the door to writing. Especially today, with indie authors having access to ebooks and social media marketing, it gives us even more leverage than ever to get our voices heard.

You really can’t say I’m not a writer. None or very very few of us write perfect first drafts. We all need a support system. Other writers, editors, tutorials, someone to pull us out of the spirals that come with writing. It takes a lot of work, but you can do it. You can write that book.

I know not everyone is interested in writing and that’s cool That leaves more room for me to be successful. lol But I think you should really think about writing that book you’ve been wanting to write. Let your authentic self shine through every sentence. Don’t like traditional format, throw that out the window then. Don’t like long never-ending stories, novella it is then. It may seem like it at face value but there’s really not that many rules when it comes to writing. There’s taking your vision and placing it into a format that others can relate to in some way. Readability helps but then there’s E E Cummings who even proved that to be false.

Let your light shine. Write with me. 😀

Amenemope belongs to the literary genre of “instruction” (Egyptian sebayt). It is the culmination of centuries of development going back to the Instruction of Ptahhotep in the Old Kingdom^[1][6] but reflects a shift in values characteristic of the New Kingdom’s “Age of Personal Piety”: away from material success attained through practical action, and towards inner peace achieved through patient endurance and passive acceptance of an inscrutable divine will.

https://www.perankhgroup.com/Amenemope.htm

As a lover of writers, I wanted to make sure I shared a specific Egyptian scribe. I decided on Amenemope, who according to Wikipedia is “the author of the Instruction of Amenemope, an Egyptian wisdom text written in the Ramesside Period.” There’s some debate on whether his text influenced the Hebrew’s Proverbs or vice versa.

In the “Instruction of Amenemope,”

the author draws an emphatic contrast between two types of men: the “silent man”, who goes about his business without drawing attention to himself or demanding his rights, and the “heated man”, who makes a nuisance of himself to everyone and is constantly picking fights with others over matters of no real importance.

https://www.perankhgroup.com/Amenemope.htm

Amenemope also, “counsels modesty, self-control, generosity, and scrupulous honesty, while discouraging pride, impetuosity, self-advancement, fraud, and perjury—not only out of respect for Maat, the cosmic principle of right order, but also because “attempts to gain advantage to the detriment of others incur condemnation, confuse the plans of god, and lead inexorably to disgrace and punishment.”

Sounds closely related to Stoicism. I’m always on the fence about pushing people to be silent since I spent a large chunk of my life quiet but I do agree it’s important to fill silence with conversations that matter to me or the individual involved. But even that isn’t absolute. Sometimes discussing things that seem to have no important lead to ground breaking discoveries.

If you’d like to read some of Amenemope’s writing you can find them here https://www.perankhgroup.com/Amenemope.htm

This is a full 52 minute video on Scribes of Egypt.

There has to be images on the walls in the temples. There is no space on the walls of temples without some sort of picture or inscription. The purpose of the pictures and inscriptions are to present all the elements that allow the individual to continue to exist after they die.

Does art and writing make us immortal or do they have any affect on our after life? What an interesting thought. It reminds of when a writer once said,

“If a writer falls in love with you, you can never die.”
― Mik Everett

I don’t know what’s going to happen to my inner life when I die, heck I don’t even know what I want to happen, but I hope it’s better than being alive.

More on Scribes to come. To be continued….