Semantics & So On

When I stopped writing fiction last year, I said one reason was I’d stopped enjoying doing it. I may have made a mistake with that statement. Last night, I was looking through old journal entries when I found this excerpt from November 2005:

I need to think about how to enjoy the process of writing. How can I stop hating every minute of it and learn to enjoy what I’m doing for its own sake, rather than for approval that I may not receive when I’m through?

It hit me like a sock full of nickels. I remembered writing it. I remembered how I felt at the time. I even remembered what story I’d been working on, a rewrite of a rewrite of a rewrite of something I always thought was almost good. When I thought about that feeling of not being good enough and of hating the process, I realized that it wasn’t true that I once wrote for the joy of it and lost the spark. The spark has been the exception, not the rule, for almost three decades.

I loved writing in school, beginning in junior high. My seventh-grade English teacher (Mrs. Torino! I still love you!) recognized my talent and encouraged me to develop it. Subsequent teachers (Mr. Sayers! Mrs. Hudson! I still love you!) did the same. I won a writing award in my senior year. The praise kept coming in college and grad school.

But there were harsh, cruel critics along the way, too, who I won’t name in public. (I remember each of you, though, you jackals.) Somehow, I internalized more of their negative feedback than praise from others. When I started writing not for academic achievement but for an imagined mass audience, I could never please it because that imaginary audience was the construct of a mind seething with self-loathing. Whatever joy I once felt for writing shriveled like a vine in a drought. It’s no wonder I stopped. I can’t understand how I kept going as long as I did.

I doubt I’ll return to writing novels now. Other factors affected my decision, and they haven’t changed. I’d consider it a fair trade if finding other creative outlets silenced the self-sabotaging critic. But lately, I see the same pattern emerging in the wood shop. I’ve done my best so far to evaluate the limits of my skill in a positive way, challenging myself to learn new skills with each project. The latest project is harder, and I have caught myself demanding impossibly high standards of machine-like precision. It makes it hard to keep going. It makes it hard to say, “That’s good enough.” It makes it hard to move on.

I once read about rug weavers in some Islamic country who deliberately wove flaws into their designs because only Allah is perfect. It occurs to me that I might have misread or misunderstood that story. Did the weavers deliberately introduce flaws into their work, or did they merely accept that flaws would occur? Even if not, it would behoove me to accept that my work can never be perfect because I am human and therefore imperfect.

It may be a mistake to say I used to write for the joy of it and lost the spark. But it’s not a mistake to learn to find joy in all my creative pursuits from now on.

Afterthough

“Hey, didn’t you say you weren’t going to post here anymore?”

Yeah, I did. Then I forgot to turn off auto-renew. I have two more years, so I might as well use it.