I find myself trying to procrastinate, to do anything else but write. It’s a combination of fear and laziness, I suppose. Writing is hard work. It takes focused mental effort. Good writing takes guts. It takes guts because you have to get over the fear you, let’s make this an I statement, I have to get over the fear I have nothing worthwhile to say. Nothing new and original. That I suck at writing. That anything good I’ve ever written has been a fluke. That I’m procrastinating right now.
This is all BS. I am pushing the keys and putting words in some kind of coherent stream. That’s the goal: one word after another until something worthwhile begins to form. Sometimes creativity is a hard slog. I’ve, at least somewhat, bought into the notion that it’s all some kind of mist I can grab out of the air, that it doesn’t take work and sweat. Partly this is because good art looks obvious; something one sees or hears and you say of course, how could it be any other way? Which is also not true because there is art that blows my brain and I have no idea how it was done. Art is complex, there is a mystery to it, much like the divine. This is why I think creativity and spirituality are, if not directly linked, close cousins. Creativity takes faith. Writing takes faith there will always be another word, that if you keep plugging at it eventually it will make sense, that you are more than the sum of your parts and with the help of the divine you can produce something bigger than yourself, which also takes maybe a little bit of hoots-spa, if thats how you spell it?
Moxie. You have to have some arrogance to put down a bunch of words and expect somebody to want to read them. You see how conflicted writers are. We are required to live surrounded by paradox. We have to live with the ambiguity of not knowing if we’ll ever produce another worthwhile word. We dance teetering on the edge of a cliff we often go over in a spectacular fall. Often there is no one to help us get up and dust ourselves off. It is not unheard of that some never get up again. Art is a dangerous game and not for the faint of heart. It’s the edge of the world and “there be dragons here.”
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3 comments:
I like your candid reflections. While it may seem worthless to write if no one reads, I believe the best writers write because they need to speak. It's kind of a bonus that somebody listens.
I like your candid reflections. While it may seem worthless to write if no one reads, I believe the best writers write because they need to speak. It's kind of a bonus that somebody listens.
Mike, you know the definition of writer's block, yes? it is the inability to let yourself write BADLY. So, recognize that not everything that jumps out as you sit at the keyboard is PERFECT. But the IMPERFECT writers complete a day's writing! The perfect ones don't start. So glad you have your blog as a great outlet for your creativity and important opinions. I haven't wanted to start a blog, afraid I won't get the rest of any of my writing done!! So not sure what that says about ME!!
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