The Emotional Work of Writing

 

To study creative writing is to study craft.  That's the premise on which virtually every workshop course is built, and it makes sense.  This is an apprenticeship like any other.  And yet the more I've thought about it, the more I've come to believe that it is understanding the emotional work of writing--not the craft--that makes the most difference in a writer's success.

There are many ways to talk about this emotional work, but the one that makes the most sense to me is the tension between two impulses, both of which are essential to writing well:  the impulse to suspend judgment and the impulse to criticize.  Because I teach freshman writing, I encounter lots of students who "hate" writing, students who would avoid it if they could.  These students are often hard on themselves, and from this emerges victim narratives:  stories of writer's block, of missing writing genes, or tales of resistance to school writing.  While these may not be particularly thoughtful perspectives on their own abilities, they certainly are emotional accounts.  I can see it in their faces. There are, of course, many reasons for this lack of faith, including the evidence their own writing provides; it can be pretty rough.  But there is one thing these students share: They only write when forced to.

I remember, many years ago, the first student I had in a creative nonfiction class who was far more talented than his teacher.  This is not false humility.  It's happened a lot since then.  I remember saying to Dan at the end of that semester how much I admired his talent, and I encouraged him to submit his work.  "Some of this is publishable," I said.  As far as I know, he never did, nor did very many of those supremely talented writers I've encountered in my classes over the years.  Clearly, knowledge of craft--and these students had it -simply didn't make much difference in the end.

Here's the one thing I do  know about getting better:  You have to write a lot.  This is as true for an MFA student as it is for a first-year writer in a composition course.  Writing a lot is the thing I've struggled with over the years, and some of this is easily explained by the many competing demands on my time.  I am more teacher than writer, and always have been, something I've only recently admitted to myself.  But this is a weak excuse for not writing because there is always time to write, at least a little. The problem with not writing enough isn't really about lack of time or some deficiencies in understanding of craft. The problem is an emotional one: the fear of failure.I don't think I've ever met an aspiring writer who doesn't wrestle with this.

In a psychological sense, I think of writing as a difficult marriage between two selves, each inclined to antagonize the other. There is a playful, wondering, curious self who relishes crashing through the underbrush in the wild pursuit of meanings.  The other self--the one who is inclined to judge--is thoroughly impatient with this recklessness. He finds it naive and inefficient.  His favorite two words are "so what?"--a question that can seem indifferent, or even contemptuous.  And yet, depending on the day, I trust him.  Sometimes I find myself in awe of what he can do with a knife, shaping and shaving sentences, paragraphs, whole essays. That self is the one who makes me feel like a good writer, which is one of the best feelings I know.  Just as often, however, he makes me want to quit. Managing these two selves is the emotional work of writing.  .They must cooperate somehow, and part of this is knowing when to put one--or the other--in charge of the work  But deeper still--and this is the hardest emotional struggle of all--is knowing that for many of us the critical self is the most dangerous because it ferociously protects the memory of failure. In some ways, this has little to do with writing.  To be overly self-critical is a psychological problem that many of us share. But it can be fatal to writers when it short-circuits the doing of the writing because this eventually undoes the desire to do it at all.  

Over the years, I saw that a partial resolution to this was finding faith in the usefulness of my"bad" writing--the stuff that won't see the light of day anywhere but in a journal, on a manual typewriter, or in the scribbles on the blank side of a recycled page. This is a solo performance in an empty auditorium--no need to show how smart I am and no reason to be anything but honest.   I needed a reason to write that had nothing to do with anybody else, This, above all else, is what has made the difference for me over the years,