Writing is a strange beast.
I was trying to think of why I have been having trouble writing lately.
Was it that my writer's brain needed new stimulation? Some of my best works of both fiction and non-fiction were produced in a time that I was taking college classes - some on writing. Perhaps I needed more learning, more enrichment, more.
Then I remembered a book that I read once, where a writer got block when he got into a relationship. As it turned out, the person he was with was stifling a part of him, and he needed to get out of the relationship or give up on his writing career. I wondered if I had traded my writing for something different... then I shook such foolishness from my mind. Of course I wasn't blocked by my true love. I wrote one of my favorite books while we were dating, and the analogy was quite imperfect (the writer who was blocked in the story was only blocked because the foolish girl he was with wanted him to be someone he wasn't, while my husband loves the person I am). This explanation could not prove to be the truth.
Then it hit me. I've been trying to harness an agent for my most recent book - and I've been trying for four months. It has been a long and frustrating road at times, and I think it has bred a poison in me. A poison called greed. Greedy for publication, for a book deal, for commercialization. And armed with this greed, I have successfully sunk into a completely blocked writer. A writer I do not want to be - a writer who cannot produce.
In the end, I dearly want to be a published author, and I've always thought that if I persist long enough, I will be able to attain this goal. So even if I don't publish the book that I'm submitting to agents now, I'll write new books, and submit those. Even if I have to go to writer's conferences and grab agents by the throats, that's what I'll do (in a gentle, convincing way, of course). I'll make it through. But the thing I was missing was this simple truth:
I should write for the mere joy of writing.
If I miss out on this, then I could be neither happily published, nor truly alive.
So back to the page I'll go, this time with a renewed respect and zeal. And perhaps I'll come out on the other side with joy for the fact that I have written, with a joy for the fact that I am alive.
Here's part of something I once wrote about why we teach English:
ReplyDelete"The truth is that the world is broken. Everyone with eyes to see knows this.
But every time a good sentence is spoken or written or a clear thought is
articulated, this broken world of ours begins to heal; light enters and darkness
recedes. And we in English are priests of the word."
On the other hand, a writer I respect immensely wrote this:
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."
Samuel Johnson
We all have mixed motives: money, power, glory, love, finding ourselves (or losing ourselves) in whatever it is we believe.... For me, although I often take pleasure in "the joy of writing," the act of creating something I could not have foreseen coming from my mind, still I want more than that joy.
I want money, power, glory, love, and so on. I don't think a moderate desire for those things is much of a sin (though, of course, I don't have a religious outlook that might school me differently.) Ambition and greed aren't synonymous in my dictionary.
What is a shame, if not a sin, is to be blocked in fulfilling an innocent desire to write. Believe me, if I had The Cure for writer's block, I'd have bottled it and sold it to the world and be a rich man today.
My only advice is the obvious: you don't know what you will write until you start to write* so the only way to move along is to start writing, avoid judging prematurely, and leave yourself open to serendipity or, if you prefer, grace.
* Of course, compulsive planners and outliners do know what they plan to write before they write and trying to live up to your own careful plans can stop a writer dead at the keyboard. I know I've said this to you or hinted at it before.
I agree - ambition isn't the same as greed - in fact I'd like to think of myself as an ambitious person! Though I may need to do something about that planning nature of mine...
ReplyDeleteBut perhaps you're right. At times if ambition and the the thought of fame and glory are the fuel for my writing, then it might not always be a bad thing. If that's what gets the writing done! Besides, what sort of a writer would I press myself to be if I thought that Danielle Hines was going to be the only person ever to see my work?
Are you getting a thrill, or still getting a thrill, writing Hines instead of Vines?
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, but some of the time I forget it all together! I think it's because it's so new, but it could also be because of the phonetic similarity... All the same, when I do remember to write my name correctly, I do love it for sure.
ReplyDelete