Everything I know about writing I learned from pottery.

Before I ever began my first real story with the intent of selling, I was a potter.  Well, I was a Veterinary Technician and a potter.  There is a studio in the garage and everything.  I have a wheel, a kiln, a canvas covered table and shelves full of glaze materials, pieces in various steps of the process, an air compressor and all the rest of the little things that go with playing with mud for money.  I'm not too bad at it, either.  I've been payed for it, I've been in juried shows and I hope to get back to it one day.  But it's really a hobby for me, not a drive.

Since childhood, I have always operated on the assumption that everyone walks around with running stories filling up all of the blank spaces on their mental wall.  I see them everywhere.  A good song is the best inspiration ever.  Things that I see, and sometimes the stories in my head, may inspire a shape for pottery, but it's not a constant influx for me.  My constant has always been words.

Now that I am writing, I have found that one of the most challenging things is focusing on one and making the others be idle.  For years I haven't written any down, but now that I am they all want attention.  But that has nothing to do with what pottery has taught me.  Nope, pottery taught me what will probably be one of the most helpful things that I will ever learn for writing- never fall in love with your work, be willing to rework or even crush it.

In pottery, there are just a million and one things that can go wrong.  Doing a bad job wedging leaves bubbles in the clay that interfere with throwing or make lovely explosions in the kiln, when trimming you can trim right through the bottom of your pot, glaze can go wrong in may ways, firing can go wrong, the clay itself might be wrong somehow.  It was the bad clay that taught me this.  My teacher, Michael, would throw some amazing, huge, beautiful piece to teach us technique and then punch it back down into a ball.  We would all freak out and he would say, "Never fall in love.  Make it better next time."  

It was my first pottery class at the local college and I was extremely proud of my work.  There were several bowls, a couple plates and maybe a cup that I had made.  But the first piece that was fired exploded in an interesting spiral pattern that Michael had never seen before.  It hurt some of the pieces next to mine and it was determined that the clay was just bad.  Some sort of impurity or whatnot.  So, right there in class where I had spent hours working hard to learn, I threw it all out.  I didn't cry but it hurt.  A lot.  Everyone else was very upset on my behalf, I think that they came close to shedding tears on my behalf.

After I was done tossing them, Mike nodded to me and said that I was going to do well.  I hadn't fallen in love, I was just determined to make the next pieces even better.  That is something that I have carried with me in life and in writing.  Don't fall in love with too much, things change too quickly.  Don't get attached to your first draft or even the one that you turn in, someone will go after it with a red pen eventually.  Those red marks can tear out your heart or teach you to do better.  And if all else fails, throw the story out and start again with a fresh page and new story.  

Sometimes, pottery pieces and stories just aren't worth fixing.  The trick is to know the difference.