I Forget To Breathe

Blogging has taught me a lot about myself as a writer. For example, that I am distracted by everything and need almost complete silence to write. I've also confirmed that I hate drafting (always have) and like any athlete with an injured knee, I've learned to compensate by writing slowly enough to edit as I go. I now know that no matter how many times I use the word definitely, I will definitely spell it definately, and perhaps most satisfyingly, that I have the ability to make people laugh out loud (I've heard you!).

What writing hasn't taught me is how to prepare myself for the deep, questioning, soul-searching paralysis and doubt that accompanies writer's block. I mean, I'm no dummy, I knew this was coming at some point. I can't even tell you how many times I've read about the "miserable self doubt" that plagues writers who encounter a dry spell. But for all the wonderfully-talented writers and artists who try to recapture the miserable depths of creative self-doubt, none of them does much to prepare you for the mud-stuck rut of it.

Which, on a side note, brings up an interesting thought: Have you ever read the description of an emotion that you've never experienced that made you feel as though you have? The idea is such a tangle of metaphysics in my head right now I can hardly get the point across without confusing myself. Does the question make sense? For all the books I've read about places I've never been that truly made me feel like I was there, I can't think of one example of an emotional experience that was ever described so well that I felt like I had had it before I had it. (Is your head spinning yet?)

Think about it. By the time women in our culture are in their 20's, most have been so well-conditioned to talk about their feelings with one another that they are expertly-versed in psychobabble and bored with talking about the "typical range of emotions" by the time they're 30. I realize this conversation doesn't strike everyone as fascinating, but the fact that we live in a culture that is so saturated with emotional analysis explains why I'm hung up on the idea of experiencing a new emotion altogether, and whether its possible to translate that emotion to someone else through writing.

Okay, wow. Enough of that sidetracking crap. Sheeeesh!

The point is, though blogging has taught me a lot about writing, writing (more specifically not writing) has taught me something very important about myself: That I put an incredible amount of pressure on myself to accomplish great things. Then to remedy any sense of overwhelming, I try to do too much at once. My Dad is always telling me to "Slow down. Take things one day at a time," and he's right. Sometimes life intersects with stress and writer's block and moving to a big city and I forget to breathe.

Writer Anne Lamott describes a similar momentum like this,

"One time, in one of my classes, I asked my students to write about lunches for half an hour, and I sat down with them and wrote ...But in half an hour there was already too much material for me and some of the people in the class, and it threatened to immobilize us. So we decided not even to bother with our parents' handwriting on the outside of the brown paper lunch bag--how much it resembled a Turkish assassin's and what that said about us. We decided to set aside the bag itself for a moment. For the time being we'd stick with the contents, and, to begin with, the sandwich. That was the one-inch picture frame we were going to look through." (From Bird By Bird, "School Lunches")

You see, 99% of the time when I'm having trouble moving forward, it isn't because I can't think of what to write. It's not that I don't know where I'm going. It's that I want everything to come together at once. I'll try to fit so many ideas into a few short paragraphs when I can't even get my arms around the idea enough to begin. Eventually, some miserable voice inside of me starts whispering a speech I've heard a thousand times before... About how I can't possibly become a successful writer if no one takes me seriously. And if I want people to take my writing seriously, I'd better write about something profound. And if I don't write from a new, creative perspective, then I'll drown in the overwhelming sea of no-talent nobody writers and never accomplish my dream.

From there, it's all over. I'm paralyzed.

I won't dare sit down to write until I've got the Number One Best Idea I've ever had, which I might as well throw away forever if I don't already have a witty lead composed in my head. And if the Number One Idea doesn't ever come, then I'd sooner reconsider any dream I've had of moving to New York to become a magazine editor than face the embarrassment of writing something lousy. What an awful thing to say.

This type of thinking is incredibly frustrating in itself. There are too many people standing in the way of my dreams in life to be standing in my own way with this do-nothing paralysis nonsense. No shit, it frustrates me. It frustrates me that I'm moving to New York next month and despite applying for dozens of jobs, networking with influential professionals, having a handful of face-to-face interviews, a terrific resume and plenty of capability, there's still no assurance I'll be any closer to my dream.

"What I do at this point," writes Lamott, "as the panic mounts and the jungle drums begin beating and I realize that the well has run dry and that my future is behind me and I'm going to have to get a job only I'm completely unemployable, is to stop. First I try to breathe, because I'm either sitting there panting like a lapdog or I'm unintentionally making slow asthmatic death rattles. So I just sit there for a minute, breathing slowly, quietly."

I do yoga. I tell people its for my mental health and lean muscle tone, but it's really to ensure that I'm breathing for at least one hour a day.

Ironically, my first sense of relief comes from knowing that people have felt this way before. Other people, sure, but breaking down and feeling completely insecure about your craft is almost a rite of passage for artists, some sort of sick initiation. (Maybe now I'm in the club ...? I don't know.) What I DO know is that for the next month I've got to concentrate on a one-inch frame perspective, take things one day at a time, and breathe. It may sound easy, but you'd be surprised.

...Awaiting Vermillion

Nothing makes me lose my voice faster than pouring my passionate little heart out to a near stranger over a lousy brass band.

Someone made the mistake of telling me that James is a writer. Not just any writer, James is a techno-terrified writer who reminded me so much of my pre-blogging-days self that I decided to convert him. Don’t worry, I said, blogging is easy. Then before I knew what was happening, I placed my hand on his shoulder, looked my newfound friend (of a friend) square in the eyes, and told him that someone out there cares about what he has to say.

I realized after our conversation that I may be responsible for giving birth to the world’s ten millionth sports blogger –and for that I will be very sorry.

That night I saw a touch of my own once-upon-a-writer's insecurity in James. When I’m not out shamelessly promoting Flirtationships at my new book club, or jotting notes down on Pearl Street Pub cocktail napkins, or mass-polling my friends across the country on g-chat, I sometimes wonder if I have anything worth saying at all. In these second-guessing moments I take comfort in a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson said that, “Every artist was once an amateur.” Simply put, you’ve got to start somewhere and it may not be pretty.

As in many quests for guidance, my musings led to the Google search bar in the upper corner of my computer screen. I thought to myself, James and I can't possibly be the only writers in history to have felt this way. (I realize I’m putting words into James’ mouth at this point, but let’s just call it a hunch). Discouragingly, my search for “writers + insecurity” turned up little more than ten sites with the same article. Worthless as it may be, I found a diamond in the rough(ly edited advice):

“Advice Tip Number 5: Ignore the Rules. Rules can be intimidating; intimidation a shortcut to insecurity. You may not know precisely when to use a comma and when to use parentheses, but that decision will never equal the importance of a good idea. We first need broad strokes to lend foundation. We wash our world in red, blue, yellow, and green. Chartreuse and vermillion come later.”

The advice is not nearly as succinct as my man Emerson, but still a valuable gem.

Speaking of treasures, one Christmas a friend of mine gave me a book so full of gems that Queen Elizabeth might have mistaken it for a crown. The book is Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life. For those of you who don’t know Twyla, she is a world-class choreographer, and a disciplined soldier of the arts. She has choreographed more than 135 dances, five Hollywood movies, directed and choreographed three Broadway shows, written two books, and won so many awards you’d be warranted to stand up, quit reading this blog, and swear off potato chips forever.

I can honestly say that I’ve never read a book as slowly as that spring of 2008. When I opened to the first page I felt like a dry sponge sitting next to a kitchen faucet, and once I started, I could hardly get through two pages before I could absorb no more. I probably read The Creative Habit in 271 three-page sessions over the course of a year --I loved that book so much. Now whenever I think of my own creative process (or stick on a hang-up), her graceful wisdom comes to mind.

The exercises sprinkles throughout The Creative Habit are designed to sharpen one's creative process, from movement to perception,or any medium from dance to oil-on-canvas. True to “Anonymous Tip Number 5,” I started practicing the following exercise verbatim, until only recently discovering its vermillion, so to speak. It's simple. Twyla suggests sitting somewhere where you can observe another person from a distance, and making a list of their first 30 movements. The exercise draws your attention to the details and focuses your descriptive skills.

To put it lightly, my own “exercise” strays from the example. For instance, I’ve collected six 1” scraps of paper and four cocktail napkins in the past two weeks, each with its own blog idea scribbled to varyious degrees of legibility. I think to myself, this will make a really [insert adjective] blog tomorrow, but the funny part is that I haven’t written about a single one of those scribbles.

When I look at the scrap of paper the next day, I end up writing about something to my left from the night before, something that happened off screen, but never what happened right in front of me. Either way, my habit of writing something down, or as it turns out writing anything down, sharpens my attention to the setting ...if not the right scene. I'm clearly on to something here, but like a toddler putting her shoes on the wrong feet, I've got a few kinks to work out.

The moral of the story? If every artist was once an amateur, then who’s to say a quirk won’t make yourmethod work?

Dedicated to James.