Friends, fellow writers...I am going a bit through a bell jar/bat shit stage (these are not synonymous terms, I'm just somewhere on this continuum) after looking long and hard at my rewrite of Part Two of Heroines and realizing I'm still not getting it, the syntax, the flow, it's too constipated still, not right. At the end of Heroines I extort young girls when writing to tell themselves they are fucking geniuses...I wish I could do that to myself now. But I can't somehow.
Recently because I was so blocked from the last rewrite of Part Two, I went to a therapist I found online, whose practice was called something like "Towards a Healthy Mind." I need that, I thought. Despite the cheesiness I went. She didn't understand why someone would be afraid to write. The fear of failure. So what if you fail she said? What are you so afraid of she said? She was a bit disgusted with me. This was way too easy for her. The thing is, some things are easy for some people and not for others. I think that is what distinguishes me sometimes from others - I suffer, I am strained, I am stopped, at events or casualties that others can shrug off. I have never been able to shrug anything off.
And yet sometimes I burn, an excitement, that I could write this well. If I had the confidence. If I had the audacity, the certainty. The flow. FLOW-bert. Jack Kerouac and his benzos. Sometimes I think that is the only thing that divides me from being successful. Sometimes I write instead with one eye open, scared out of my mind. Or I ostrich madly, procrastinating.
Why is writing sometimes so painful? And impossible?
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i wish i could tell myself that too. i relayed the story of you doing this to a friend of mine and we both stared at each other and i said "isn't that fucking amazing?" and he was like "fuck yes it is!"
ReplyDeleteand so i must strive to somehow look myself in the face in the bathroom mirror and tell myself "you're a fucking genius" over and over again until i somewhat believe it or am at least pumped up enough to just not give a fuck.
i started reading my diary from last october and i am staring at these words written in my handwriting but thinking "this was not me. there's no way this person was me. this isn't me at all." such a horrible, forced positivity in my voice... the horror of looking on the bright side. and i want something so much different in my work.
i want audacity too. like you, if i am to suffer at every turn and never be able to shake anything off, let me at least find a way to transmute it. to transmute it and not have it absolutely suck.
Love you Angela. To me you have the soul of a true artist. Someday I am sure I will say: Fuck yeah I know Angela Simione. Actually, I am already like this.
ReplyDeleteFor OFA, some of the Maggie scenes are taken with my disgust and aversion after reading my college journals. A few lines are verbatim from what I wrote. One in particular stands out: Sometimes Maggie's mind is full of potato chips and other times she's sure she's practically a genius.
Writing real writing from the imagination is hard is impossible because well, it's ART. Playing Mozart is hard too. Playing Bach is impossible. That's art too. Writing isn't supposed to be easy. I distrust writers who say it is. I distrust writers who say that Jesus drops a poem or story or essay on them every once in a while because Jesus is a nice white guy and doesn't want writers to suffer or have to struggle to make sense of things or feel conflict or anguish. Easy writing is not real writing. Doing the work is awful. I hate it. But the rewards are truer than that mansion in the sky that has many rooms. Believe it.
ReplyDeletelove,
Rebecca
Love you Rebecca.
ReplyDelete