On choosing inspiration over shame
Year’s end always brings reckoning. My inbox is full of people taking stock: of their finances, of their families’ paths through this rocky year, of books read, places visited, or even word counts from Nanowrimo.
It’s as if we need to measure ourselves up before someone else does it, before the narrative of our lives is coopted by the capitalist structures of our societies and used against us. We weren’t lazy or unproductive or inefficient—we were just being strategic, thoughtful, visionary. That’s why we got so little done / weren’t as successful as we’d hoped.
A long time ago I met a guy who wanted to be a writer. He’d never completed a novel, because every time he got halfway through he was ashamed of it and needed to start over. It wasn’t good enough. He could thoroughly critique himself and other writers, so he had the talent and the taste; in many ways, those were exactly what held him back. Too paralyzed by the knowledge of what great ought to be, he couldn’t even achieve good.
I see this tendency everywhere, this striving for transcendence followed by a shame-spiral into something so much worse than mediocrity because you feel you must be able to do better than this. Rage follows shame, blame follows rage, and nothing ever gets done in the black pit of despair.
Recently I’ve been reading more Toni Morrison. I started with Beloved and moved on to The Bluest Eye. After each day of reading I feel inspired not just to write, but to see more of the world around me, to feel more richly into every moment instead of racing somewhere new. The language is seismic, shifting something in my bones and leaving them more settled than a chiropractor’s adjustments.
I realize as a writer, there is always a choice: you can read other writers and feel shame and rage, knowing that what they do is your ambition if you could only get your act together. Or you can read the masters as unattainable, believing that you could never do what they did but striving to get close anyway. The latter makes writing a kind of religion, like seeking union with the divine even knowing its impossibility.
But with either of those options, it’s easy for the shame to seep in. I’m not worthy to sit in a shelf next to those writers, says the voice. What’s the point of writing? Haven’t they already said it all, and better?
What’s behind Door Number 3? It’s a mental state that’s hard to describe, but is probably the key to any artist’s sanity. It happens when you no longer view your own work with the lens of ‘Is this Good Enough?’ but rather with a more compassionate lens like ‘Am I happier with this draft than the last one? If so, why? What’s working?’
I may not be perfectly happy with this draft. It may or may not be Good Enough for Agent X at Time T. But am I happier with this version than the last? Beyond doubt. Will I be happier with the next draft? Probably—because the me who’s writing the next draft is richer for the months lived in the meantime and the inspiration of Toni Morrison. And that’s all that really matters—if I can’t love my own writing, nobody else ever will. The shame will stink up the pages instead.
I struggled to find an appropriate image for this post, and then found this photo of inflatable Santas strung up in Jerusalem. Somehow it felt seasonally appropriate. These Santas have been judged for judging you, for making naughty and nice lists instead of just letting you be happy for the holidays.