Of Too Much Light, and Time: Smack Dab in the Imagination by Dia Calhoun

 

Sometimes when, for all the best reasons, we hyper-focus ona piece of writing, we can over-write it. We give it too much of the light ofour attention, just as a photographic image can suffer from too much light.

Usually, I can’t see this happening until I’ve walked awayfrom the writing for a time. That’s funny, isn’t it, because time is the commonelement here. Too much time in the camera lens—causes overexposure. And we needtime away from the work to see it. This conjours an image of draping a sheetover a sculpture or pulling a curtain over a painting. They—like our writing—needto hide or rest in the darkness for a time before we can see them clearly.Perhaps part of being any kind of artist is understanding how time is anessential part of our work.