I read the essay, "Professions for Women" by Virginia Woolf, last Sunday as I waited for church to begin. I'm not sure whether it was more encouraging or disheartening, that she struggled so much with that damn voice that told her to shut up and mind her place. Encouraging - because she's so fantastic and still found writing so difficult. Disheartening - because, well, she did end up killing herself.
I suppose we all have various forms of various voices that tell us to stop embarrassing ourselves, live quietly, move slowly. I was reminded of my own version yesterday. I got a paper back that I wrote last semester. It wasn't the kind of paper I enjoy writing. I felt all floundery and ill-at-ease and reluctant, but wrote that sucker out, did my best and handed it in. I got 79%. Gross.
All of a sudden, I was so ashamed of everything I had ever written - of all my blundering, mistake filled, emotionally vulgar and vulnerable crap. I imagined the mean people I know sniggering behind their hands, and the kind ones, sweetly embarrassed for me. Had you all eyes I could have seen yesterday, I don't think I would have been able to look into them.
Silly? Yes.
Unnecessary? Yes.
Truthful? I don't know.
My professor didn't mean to discourage me so much, I'm sure. In fact, he said some pretty fantastic things about my writing, but I get so scared. I hold my breath so much. I flinch. I wait for the slap.
Still, I write because I have to - some days more so than others. I write because if I didn't, my soul would probably explode like a loose fire hose, spraying all over the place and knocking out any children, dogs, or overly thin people that got in its way. I have yet to understand to whom I am writing. I think it's somewhere between myself and God - with the occasional man I can't stop thinking about. Sometimes it's family. Sometimes India. Most of the time I feel like a kid waiting to be sent upstairs to bed. Once in a while a few words join together like clasped hands and I imagine them twirling around on my tongue like a helix. I weave them into my hair, sew them to the inside of my shirt, wear them for clothes next to my soul, all day long. And, of course then, my shoes don't touch the ground at all.
2 comments:
I'm glad this post ended the way it did -- a nice rally indeed over some sneakily self-defeating thoughts! My observation about writers is that uncertainty about their "success" (terrible word/idea!!!) is a constant in their lives. I wish it weren't, since I would wish that pain to disappear from my writer-friends' lives. But perhaps it is intrinsic and essential to your craft, to your constant process of CREATING, because Creating is painful for us humans, huh? I mean, it's also gorgeous, amazing, and mindblowing, but there's always some element of pain, I think (probably because our creating is just an image/echo/tiny part of His perfect Creating - we're reaching for it, trying to take part in it, but there's a part of us that is oh so aware of how far off we are...) ANYhow, parting thought: Faulkner thought all of his novels were essentially "failed poetry". I believe Hardy thought the same of his own.
thanks sitohcilod,
-trying to take part in god's creating...i like that.
huh. creating is intrinsically painful, isn't it? i haven't really thought of it that way before - of the process itself as the cause of pain, not necessarily my inability to be as perfect as i think i should be.
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