HOW MUCH COURAGE DOES OUR ART NEED?
Writers need courage. If you’re a writer, you already know this. Yesterday, I’m talking with a colleague whose students will be redesigning my website. She’s talking search engine optimization (SEO) and audience and five-year goals and audio recordings, and I say, “I hate this stuff.” So she tells me a story about learning to ride a motorcycle and how terrifying it was, but she did it, and now she loves it! I thought, “I know what you’re doing; I teach too.” Also, hatred and fear aren’t the same, although they may be linked. Mostly, I think SEO and audience and five-year goals and audio recordings are boring. I’d rather be making something. But she’s great. And her students are redesigning my website!!
Just in case it is about courage, I’ve been exercising mine by writing a play. I’ve been in a slump since my novel publisher abandoned me (maybe for not paying attention to SEO, audience, five-year goals, and audio recordings). One way out of a slump is to try something new.
Did I mention courage? It’s taking a boatload.
My husband and I love theater. In high school, I did some acting and loved it. I even loved role-playing the defense attorney in the Sacco and Vanzetti trial in our eighth-grade reenactment. My team won their freedom in a great historic reversal. Just sayin’.
Love means the stakes feel high. Poems go into the void and a faceless editor accepts or rejects them. In theater, actors will say my words in front of me and other people. Terrifying.
Theater people in my life have offered help. At a party recently, an actor acquaintance waxed enthusiastic about a local theater company and suggested they might do a table read for me. (A room full of strangers??) Another actor friend in New York will critique it after the election (she’s volunteering): a month until I have to face my inadequacies.
In addition to the courage necessary to get the writing into the world, the writing itself takes guts. Last night, at Writers in Conversation, Jeff Mock, Tim Parrish and I got talking about this idea that writers need to open a vein. Writing professors harp on this: to be great on the page, writers need to let the pain deeply inform their work. When Tim said this, I asked Jeff about his process, and he commented that he “didn’t write poems like that,” saying that instead that he worked with ideas and personas, trying to get at the truth of something at an angle. This seems to work for him; his poems are beautiful and demanding.
I have thought a lot about the idea that re-experiencing emotional pain is necessary for writing. Some writers cry when their characters die or they write about their pasts. Maybe I’m secretly a psychopath—or not a very good writer—but I think there are gradations both to the amount of pain I need to feel when I’m writing and the amount I need to feel about the business end of my writing life. Can I nick the vein? Do I need to slice it from wrist to shoulder? How long do I need to bleed onto the page? How much do I need to relive that past darkness anymore? I’ve done the therapy. Maybe I’m comfortable in my neurosis. I think I’m doing the work, but maybe I’m wimping out.
How much courage does your writing life take? I always love hearing from readers about their own creative journeys. Thanks for reading.
Events:
Writers in Conversation with Sharbari Ahmed and Chris Belden, talking novels and films, on October 23, 6:30 PM, at the Norwalk Public Library, One Belden Avenue, Norwalk, CT.
Writers in Conversation with Tessa Wegert and Elise Hart Kipness, talking thrillers, on November 20, 6:30 PM at the Norwalk Public Library, One Belden Avenue, Norwalk, CT.
Courage? I prefer a paycheck, an assignment, and a deadline, in that order. In my 20s I wrote a lot of shift logs and progress notes. Those are very human, humane, humanizing documents that require discernment based on reporting of facts, preferably without pathological judgment. The pay is decent, the assignment and deadline are clear. In my 30s I shifted to writing editorials, opinion pieces, feature stories and arts reviews, still paid, still on assignment and on deadline. Now in my 60s, my current prose writing as a teacher is much the same. I also write music at work for my ensembles, with a concert date burning a hole in the calendar.
When I write poetry, the paycheck isn’t money. The assignment is 'get this ferment out of me,' the deadline is 'now,' the paycheck is simply 'pressure release.' I’m afflicted with a poem when I show up in person and listen to a message that spurs a response which possesses me to distraction. If and only if I’m debilitated for normal pursuits, I surrender and expel what the Muses have dumped into me. The penciled exorcism is massacred, the surviving bits are retched up in public.
For some reason these poems don't fake showing up, and neither can I.
Courage is great. As a source of inspiration, though, I prefer habit and money. Money as inspiration spurs both fear of lack and courage to act. Money, fear, and courage keep me going.
I love the drama of Red Smith's quote, "Just sit down at the typewriter, open a vein and bleed," but writing that just bleeds on me isn't satisfying. I think as a writer I need to be willing to do that, but I want to be surprised when I read and when I write. The courage I need is to write without steering to safety.
Also there's a difference in the courage you need to draft and the courage you need to publish. I need to be willing to go anywhere when I draft, but I have different responsibilities to the reader and myself when I publish. "That was brave" is not a compliment I want to hear about my writing. "That was wise" would be better. "That was surprising." would be good. "That was brave, wise and surprising" would be great. Of course, I've never heard that, but I imagine that would feel pretty good.
Thanks, Laurel, for making me think.