I have to be kind of delicate here: when I talk about work that I’m dissatisfied with, the people that read this blog are the same people that would try and convince me of that work’s value. My circle is full of cheerleaders. That’s pulled me through a lot of bleaker seasons!
But if I’m not writing for the approval of others, that means I’m sometimes writing in spite of the approval of others. A writer’s relationship to their writing isn’t all that precious. I’ve written plenty I’m proud of, and gotten praise for it. I’ve done plenty of bad writing, and people have told me so. I’ve written things I stand by, but which weren’t well received, and naturally I’m not happy with some pieces despite audience approval. Zero correlation between pride and praise. (Although praise is very nice.)
So this slasher piece. Please go read it if this is the first you’re hearing of it — I don’t want to tip your opinion one way or another! But I’m not 100% happy with it. Why that is isn’t a mystery to me. The tone is too formal, the argument is too big. It took too long. On the other hand, the doing of the piece was fun and I’m proud of what I know now that I didn’t know before.
No, this post is not me noodling on how I can do better next time, and it’s definitely not me kicking myself. It’s that I’m missing a key step in the cycle of writing, and I’d like to suggest a couple links that could finish that cycle. After the legacy of Austin Kleon, I even drew a helpful circular diagram!
This is my — maybe a lot of writers’ — “cycle of confidence.” That’s what I’m calling it, although as always I’m open to the idea that I’m aping something already in existence.
You start with confidence that your ideas matter. (I say “you start with,” but confidence is hard-fought and hard-won.) From a place of self-esteem, you start generating quality ideas. They’re quality because they’re unique to you. One idea snags your attention.
Inspired, you throw yourself into that idea. For me this looks like a ton of research, scrunched up freewrites in my notebook, lots of chatting and walking around. Inspiration is the most fun an artist can have.
It’s really hard to stay inspired through the entire life cycle of a project, though, and eventually your energy crashes against the realities of production. Sometimes that’s competing responsibilities, or maybe it’s writer’s block. At an industry level, it’s money. You lose faith.
This is where “the process” becomes super important. I’m academically interested in what artists call “the process,” because it’s almost like a religion in creative circles. Something you cultivate and trust unshakeably, even though no one can describe what it is. Like, sure, there’s blogs and coaching plans that outline a holistic “creative process.” They tend to focus on the effects, the outcomes, the states of mind produced in various stages of the process, not the actual actions that go into it.
The process looks different for everybody. It’s the motions you go through after you lose faith. For me that’s looking through my collection, writing blog posts, rereading, chatting over a beer with my writer friends. When you can’t trust your brain to spontaneouly produce great ideas, you draw thousands of lines and find the picture that already exists. You can’t usually rely on the process to get you started. It’s meant to carry you past the post.
Finally, you have your finished product. That product replenishes your confidence — the joy of having finished something.
I drew a garden path arrow, though, because that’s the situation I’m in. What do you do when the thing you finished calls your confidence into question, rather than bolstering it? There’s a few candidates:
- Rest. I hate the school of thought that writing is suffering and you should only do it if you’ve tried everything else. But I love Charles Bukowki’s words on writing: “unless it comes out of / your soul like a rocket, / unless being still would / drive you to madness or / suicide or murder, / don’t do it.” I like this poem because he’s not saying you can’t succeed, he’s saying success isn’t the point. I’ve grappled with whether or not I want to be a writer, and I will again. But I know that when I don’t write for 36 hours I start really wanting to. Once I step away, I realize I don’t have any choice but to be confident.
- Plan. I don’t need inspiration to come up with new ideas, because when I was inspired I planned ahead. I have a spreadsheet of ideas that excite me. Start having fun, and you can cheat your way into inspiration without remembering you were supposed to doubt yourself. This does mess up the chart though, since you have to plan in the inspiration phase.
- Start. Some writers just show up. If that’s you — you have a time, and a place, and maybe even activity that you start at every single day — then you probably don’t need confidence in the first place. Not every day. Developing a routine like this takes time and a certain disposition. It also takes financial security, unless you’re glow-in-the-dark and do your best work at 5 a.m. or 10 p.m.
- Survival. The counterpoint to financial security! If your life depends on daily creative work, you probably don’t have margin for self-doubt! Fear can be a paralytic as much as it can be a motivator, so I don’t think this works for everybody, but on the plus side if you’re making a steady living from your art then you’ve cleared unimaginably many hurdles already. That’s worthy of confidence in my book.
- Cheer. Something we can forget as artists is that we’re our first audience. Like, you know how you can watch a TV show and have lots of opinions about how it should have gone? Your art is the one creative thing you can control. In other words, write what you want to read. Then, in your dark winter of the soul, read your own writing and remind yourself how good it is. Someone’s therapist said, you get to decide when each day starts and ends. You decide when a bad day is over. Same with writing: if your last piece doesn’t sparkle with you, pick a new last piece. You’re still the you that wrote it.