I’ve been thinking a lot about why I find myself eager to go make art, and reluctant to start writing. (It’s the starting that’s the problem — once I start, I’m usually fine and happy.)
I think a lot of it has to do with anxiety, but also with the idea of being a professional. I’ve been a professional writer for more than 30 years now. It’s in my Facebook description, I wouldn’t hesitate to put it on a business card. But I do get a little wobbly about some bits of writing — I rarely feel comfortable calling myself a poet, for example.
And I think there’s a reason for that — it’s because I didn’t really study how to write poetry, and I don’t necessarily work hard at it, the same way I did at other kinds of writing. I went to grad school and worked on prose in my MFA program, and then again in my Ph.D. program, both fiction and nonfiction. I’ve studied poetry, of course, but as a reader / critique, not as a writer.
I don’t know the lingo the poets use, and I have very little sense of what I’m doing, rather than just putting down words without line breaks. I would be super-reluctant to teach a poetry class, because I have no academic structure in my head about what I do when I write poetry. And yet, sometimes I do write a poem I like. The cancer poems weren’t bad, I think. Some of the love poems I wrote Kevin, back in the day, might be worth reading.
I feel the same way about art. I’ve taken lots of little art classes, of course — drawing and photography and pottery and printing and oh, it’s a long, long list. I have a stack of how-to craft books, many of which I’ve read through.
And I’ve learned a ton more recently from YouTube tutorials, and I hate to say it, but it’s true — reels. (I’ve gotten to really like watching crafting reels. It’s embarrassing, because I’m resistant to Facebook pushing me towards them, but on the other hand, I like them and find them useful and inspiring, so I should probably just get over that.)
So yes, I’ve studied art some, but not in any kind of structured way, just dabbling, really. See how I minimize it with that word, ‘dabbling’. Not ‘professional.’ Not ‘serious.’
And the thing is, I probably could get myself to start calling it something more than dabbling. People like my stuff, they pay real money for my stuff, which in many ways is how we tend to define the difference between amateur and professional. But I’m a little resistant to making the move. And I think that’s where it wraps back around to anxiety.
I’m having so much FUN with the art I’m doing lately — the resin, the polymer clay, the sewing. I’m mostly just making pretty things (but why do I feel the need to put ‘just’ in that sentence? does art have to be more than pretty to be art?), and my expectations for them are very low — if it looks pretty enough that I’d be willing to sell it to someone, that’s good enough.
And because my expectations are low, and I’m not really calling it art, I don’t have a lot of anxiety about doing it. I’m crafting. Crafting is fun. Crafting is a low-stress activity you (mostly women) engage in to relax. If I happen to sell it after, that’s nice, but not the point.
I used to feel that way about writing, but a long, long time ago. Maybe the first year I was writing? I wrote because it was fun, because I was playing with words, because I wanted to try writing something silly, or lush, or using a fun point of view. And the more I studied it, the more I learned how to do things deliberately and reliably and how to ‘fix’ mistakes, the more professional it became, and expectations grew (mostly in my own head), and I started to really really care about external validation, and it kind of sucked a lot of the joy out of the process.
I want it back. I want the joy in writing to come back, and I want to keep the joy I’m finding in crafting, in making art (and I’m not sure I see any real difference between craft and art at this point — feel free to argue with me if you disagree!). I want to be playful, and have fun, and not find myself stopped by anxiety that makes my shoulders tense and my head and stomach hurt when I’m about to go write something.
Not sure quite how to accomplish that. Something something about lowering expectations? This is often what people mean when they talk about going back to ‘beginner’s mind’ — this isn’t a new concept. I think what’s usually recommended is to do things like writing exercises again, the kind of things you did when you were a little baby writer. Low-stakes, fun little things. Doodles.
If all my writing time is wrestling with a difficult novel, and/or submitting said novel and hearing rejections (or possibly worse, crickets), well, of course that’s going to be emotionally tough.
Maybe I want to take a workshop on this — getting back to beginner mind, to playfulness, to flow state. Recommendations welcome. Maybe I’ve studied the craft with my head enough for a while, and I need to practice the work with my heart instead.
My goal for 2023 was to do less, and I succeeded for a bit in the summer, but have mostly failed otherwise. So I think I need to keep that goal in 2024. But maybe I add a second one — have more fun. Play games. Make silly messes. Experiment, and see what happens.
Maybe the results will be beautiful.