Professional Piece

Advice to Writers

Billy Collins

Even if it keeps you up all night,

wash down the walls and scrub the floor

of your study before composing a syllable.

Clean the place as if the Pope were on his way.

Spotlessness is the niece of inspiration.

The more you clean, the more brilliant

your writing will be, so do not hesitate to take

to the open fields to scour the undersides

of rocks or swab in the dark forest

upper branches, nests full of eggs.

When you find your way back home

and stow the sponges and brushes under the sink,

you will behold in the light of dawn

the immaculate altar of your desk,

a clean surface in the middle of a clean world.

From a small vase, sparkling blue, lift

a yellow pencil, the sharpest of the bouquet,

and cover pages with tiny sentences

like long rows of devoted ants

that followed you in from the woods.

I really connect to this poem because it is very often that I don’t want to write an essay, or try to avoid doing something (cough cough IP) and end up cleaning everything or doing all of my other homework. It is then that I sit down and actually get the real work done. It is only once I have everything clean, everything organized that I am able to focus on my writing. It was encouraging to know that other, especially professional, authors and poets have the same problems that I do. I feel as if writing about this struggle to write is something that is hard to correctly do and can often be taken as complaining or annoying. However I think Collins did a very good job of taking a topic so well-known and introducing it in a completely new way.