art & fear

Writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead. –Gene Fowler

In the midst of our summer domestic abundance, my writing is sucking the big one.

To shore myself up a bit, I’m reading a short book called Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland.  So far it’s about the emotional rollercoaster that is being an artist or a writer. Here is a quote:

Making art these days means working in the face of uncertainty; it means living with doubt and contradiction, doing something no one much cares whether you do, for which there may be neither audience nor reward.

Just makes you want to slit your wrists doesn’t it?

But no, actually, it’s helpful. The message is that feeling this way is normal. And it doesn’t mean you should quit.

A few more quotes:

Conditions are never perfect, sufficient knowledge rarely at hand, key evidence always missing, and support notoriously fickle. All that you do will inevitably be flavored with uncertainty–uncertainty about what you have to say, about whether the materials are right, about whether the piece should be long or short, indeed about whether you’ll ever be satisfied with anything you make.

Uncertainty is the essential, inevitable and all-pervasive companion to your desire to write. And tolerance for uncertainty is the prerequisite to succeeding.

Writer’s quit when they convince themselves that their next effort is already doomed to fail. And writers quit when they lose the destination for their work–for the place their work belongs.

Virtually all writers encounter such moments. Fear that your next work will fail is a normal, recurring and generally healthy part of the artmaking cycle.

I’ve been thrashing around with the new novel, writing a scene from here or there in the story, doing research, thinking a lot about the characters and about what the story is that wants to be told. I’ve been struggling the most with fears that the subject matter isn’t valuable–is unworthy somehow–I guess that I shouldn’t love what I love.

So it’s helpful to be reminded that this is all par for the course, that other writers, more successful or prolific or beloved, go through the same shite.

Artists share a common view of magic: the fatalistic suspicion that when their own art turns out well, it’s a fluke–but when it turns out poorly, it’s an omen.

As I negotiate the parts of the writerly voyage that are full of such self-doubt storms, I keep chanting my mantra, which usually helps a little: keep rowing. Trust the muse and keep rowing.  I just keep telling myself this, and taking the step that is right in front of me.  The other, more drill-sergeant version of the mantra is Shut Up and Write.  But I’m trying to be kinder to myself these days.  So keep rowing Maya. Just keep rowing.  And breathe.