The Degeneration of Good Intentions....

Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into
hard work.
-- Peter Drucker

My first thought, a question really, was is this Mr. Drucker of the Green Acres Generl Store fame? I mean the quote is profound, but I could see Sam Drucker saying it. But then I realized that Sam and Peter most likely weren't the same person, or he'd have the same first name. Amazing how brilliant I can be at five am.

Peter Drucker, had he run Drucker's General Store, would have had something of Walmart Proportions in several years. He was born in Vienna, 1909, got a PHd in Public and International Law and moved to the States in 1939. About the time of Hitler taking over Europe, which makes me wonder if he was Jewish, timing wise. The little bio I read didn't say. But it did say he's written 35 books, fifteen that are management classics and 2 novels, and one book of autobiographical essays. I'd like to read that one. He wrote for a long time for the Wall Street Journal. The thing that impresses me, he wrote and published his latest book in 2002. So that would make him, what, 83 when he wrote his last book? Amazing.

History lesson over. But I love this quote. Plans degenerating into hard work is what writing is all about. The problem is, it is so much easier to talk about what you want to do, then to actually sit the butt in the chair and work. It's easier to stroll along the fiction section of the book store and see where your finished work would be shelved, than to sit and finish. It is easier to talk about writing than to sit and write. It is even easier to listen to some one else talk about writing, someone who's actually done the work, than to do the work yourself. Or myself, no reason not to claim the problem myself. The more you talk about something, specifically a writing project, the bigger it gets and the more difficult it becomes to actually write it. Because, in my case, the talent is easily outpaced by the imagination and planning part. Hemingway used to say that when he talked about a work before the writing, he would "use up" all the words and not be able to write it, as if the act of talking about it would be the brain's equivalent of writing. The gray matter says, Been there, done that, wait for the movie. And the page remains blank, or worse, the words are there, but feel flat, lifeless, and flogged to death.

I'm not sure what my point is, besides the fact I really need to get some work done this week!