I’m having this new epiphany series about listening to my soul/my inner artist after a second disappointing Artist’s Date. The Midtown Global market? Amazing for food. The shops, however, are starting to drag – it’s a lot of boring state fair crap right now. And while I need to eat and I enjoy cooking, my inner artist is pretty much more interested in the creation process than it is in the food.
So, despite my intention of doing my Chapter 9 check-in and moving on since I’ve already read chapter 10 and I’m ready to dig in to some fresh material, I got a nudge on the Creative U-Turns.
Oh yeah. I was avoiding that.
My avoidance tells me that it was definitely something I needed to deal with.
I have a lot of guilt about my U-turns.
I feel like I’ve let myself down and let down others. I feel like I’ve let down history.1
Basically, my guilt revolves around all the things I haven’t finished. It’s because I got sucked in by the perspective that creative work wasn’t a positive contribution to society, and that artists were basically entitled freeloaders who wanted to goof off. It’s because I was delivered the message that my writing only mattered if it was for money, and writing wasn’t really art, it was craft. (Crap.) It’s because my “poems were stupid,” because I was “too young to really know what I was talking about,” or because I should “quit trying to be deep.” The support I got was peer encouragement from Devin and Marsha. Marsha, if you ever read this, I was a condescending bitch to you and I am truly and deeply sorry. You deserved better, especially with all the support you gave me. I never gave you credit for how creative you were yourself. You are creative, and your dreams are valid. I hope you pursue them at any time in your life.
The guilt I feel for myself revolves around all the things I didn’t finish. I say – and fake – like I’m ready for the world of success or failure, but when it comes to really stepping up to the big boys. I always run and hide instead. I even went to a tiny college that almost lost its accreditation in hopes of ducking competition because it “stressed me out.” This is not the choice of a self-confident creative. I’ve been collecting rejection slips since I was 14; I feel sometimes like going with occult writing I’ve only done it to avoid the rejection slip tango even though I’ve still gotten a few for what very few book pitches I’ve done. The occult, however, is such a rarified subject that it’s easy to get short articles published (most of the time) although it can be very difficult to actually get paid for them.
So, my list of U-turns, i.e. for me regrets:
- Not completing manuscripts
- Not completing the manuscipt that a VERY big name publisher invited me to complete2
- Not creating a body of completed work to use in finding an agent
- Not completing my still-relevant screenplay
- Dropping out of grad school – the divorce was an excuse because I wanted to run away; I could easily have lived in Mankato and finished up if I’d chosen
Notice a theme here? For someone who forces herself to finish even the most boring book on the planet, I have a lot of neglected business running around.
Out of all of this, I am choosing to finish something. The screenplay is in its second draft. Books take a long time to write.This is where my writing of fanfiction comes in handy: every time I complete and upload a fanfic, I get a small emotional/hormonal reward from the sense of completion and the stray reviews I get. I use this energy then in my completely original projects, and it helps me finish. It also toughens me up when the ouch-delivery critics come out of the woodwork.
This morning when I grabbed my Artist’s Way
Tags: iplant the seeds, artist’s way
