A writer’s life can be a lonely one. And yet, contrary to popular opinion, that’s not because we’re incurable hermits. Writing is, ultimately, an act of communication, a desire to go beyond a superficial awareness of the human experience and enter into challenging conversations that deepen our collective understanding. But this deep, focused work must be done primarily on one’s own, so it’s no wonder that when we come up for air, we tend to overcorrect ever so slightly.
I firmly believe that a book (or poem or short story) is not completed until it’s read. But it can be all too easy to give your power away when you engage in the necessary activity of inviting opinions from others. This probably has more than a little to do with the fact that many of the qualities that produce excellent writers also make them unusually willing to ingest and believe what others tell them about themselves — a fearless tendency to question everything; a willingness to court doubt; exquisite sensitivity; perfectionism; and the aforementioned compassionate introversion that gives us the capacity to spend hours alone but doesn’t mean that we don’t crave deep and meaningful connections with others. This might be why, every now and then, when your editor/friend/spouse generates feedback with your best interests in mind, you still wind up contemplating manuscript arson or divorce.
Yet while it will always sting because we will always care, I have found that reminding myself to work from the inside out has helped to protect me from drowning in a sea of my own misguided insecurities. This, incidentally, also produces better work, because working from the inside out involves approaching your writing practice and your work with an intrinsic drive calling the shots. And before you leap to defend yourself, insisting that you only write for yourself and never let other people’s opinions get in your way, take a moment to really think through the last time you worried about what people might think of your work, or whether or not you’ll ever be publishable, or how what you write stands up to the work of some of your favorite writers, or the last time you found yourself nursing old wounds from writing teachers and other horned beasts from the past. And it’s not just these more obvious thoughts that can tip us into the dangerous terrain of working from the outside in; it’s also our own hidden expectations or defensive perfectionism that can get in the way, most of which are generated by way of the warped ways we have taught ourselves to fit in and maintain whatever social status quo our middle school selves fought so hard to maintain. How people see us, in other words, matters. But it should never matter more than what we have to say.
Art: Marc Chagall, Le Peintre et Son Double
Love it, and love the Chagall!
This is so spot on and I would say it is true for visual artists as well. I completely identified with this
I would say this is spot on for all creative souls who pour themselves into their expressions in a foreign used personal way. Well said…