Barbara: I am taking the most
wonderful, creative and inspiring writing course right now with Michel
Basilieres (writer of the magnificent Black Bird). One of the fundamental writing lessons he is teaching us, a lesson he
reiterates over and over in case we forget it (because we do forget it over and over) which, in my humble opinion, also happens
to be a fundamental life lesson is: no
matter what you do, you are NEVER EVER “wasting your time”.
It’s a funny obstacle many
writers have that if you see that something in your writing isn’t working, you
have this tremendous sense of frustration and fatigue, ennui even, and usually
high levels of resistance to the idea that you might need to start over again. Maybe
you need to throw something away that you’ve slaved over. Or maybe you need to
accept that something you’ve really attached yourself to, creatively and
emotionally, just isn’t working the way you thought/hoped/imagined. The crux of
this discovery, either your own for yourself or from an outside eye, is that it
feels like a rejection of you and your work. You may feel stupid (how could I have missed/written that?).
You may feel angry (fuck you, you don’t
know what you’re talking about!). You may even feel you want to just pack
it in and give up. And let me just be blunt about that: if you do actually pack it in and give up, then
you didn’t care enough about that dream/idea/creation. Because, like in life,
anything that really matters to you, anything that is deep and meaningful and
spiritually important takes an extraordinary investment of time. Like, maybe
even all the time you have…
Every writer has a point (or
many points along the way) where they have to take stock and make adjustments.
We all know the famous quote about writing being 10% writing and 90%
re-writing. Writers often get writer’s block because they are consumed with
this anxiety that if they don’t get it JUST RIGHT the first time, the work
they’ve toiled over will go to scrap, so rather than do “wrong” work, they
don’t do any work at all.
For all you writers out
there, here’s the best news: every single word you write—whether it “survives”
or does not—gives you something enormous: it might teach you about the craft,
it might open up a story path you hadn’t considered and will still use, it
might produce a sentence or a character or an idea that would never otherwise
have been born. Nothing you create when you sit down to create is useless.
And, as I considered the
truth of this lesson, the importance
of it, I realized all of life is like this. We all have experiences and moments
that we kind of chuck into the garbage after they’re done (well, that’s over, thank god),
and then we find ourselves facing the same kind of experience or moment over
and over and we sigh and wail and throw up our hands (no, not that again!). But
every one of our dreary life experiences also carries the seeds of life lessons
embedded within. And, I think, if we pay attention and reflect, we can
certainly find the creative genius in those challenges, and that the residual
effect is specifically valuable and true to us.
There is no waste of time in
the mountains of balled up, cast-off pages landing in the trash, and there is
no waste of time in the things we do that don’t end up so pretty and perfect.
We are all… wait for it … you know it’s coming … works in progress.
Deb: I LOVE THIS
POST! All the stuff I know but needed to be reminded of. Barb, you and I know
firsthand how this is. We have written and rewritten our scripts over and over
and then over again. We always had the same can-do spirt about it, I think,
based on this philosophy. But as Barb knows I am trying to write this kid's book
that has been in my head forever and I NEEDED this lovely and positive
reminder. Thanks, Barb. Thanks, Barb’s teacher!
