Well, I guess it’s more things I’m learning this week.
Because I’m teaching at this amazing Writer’s Retreat in Taos and yeah, it’s all kinds of intense.
Definitely not at the “processing my weird-ass realizations” point yet, but I thought I’d come here and share some of the things I’m noticing and recognizing.
Thing #1: Saying the word “writer”? Still ridiculously hard.
Yes, I am not unaware of the irony. Neither is my duck. But there it is.
Jen had us do this exercise where we said “I am a writer!” over and over again. Whispering it, yelling it, saying it to the trees and the sky and each other.
And even though I promised to let Writer Me get a whole week of love and acknowledgment, there was still this part of me that went waaaaaaaaaaaay into resistance.
Me: I am a writer.
Resistance Me: Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell, you’re a blogger. Let’s not go too far.
Me: I am a writer.
Resistance Me: E-books, honey. They’re not books.
Me: I am a writer.
Resistance Me: How about we just save that word for when you’re being reviewed in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell, mmmm? K?
Thing #2: Resistance Me actually wants me to be published.
We also did a ton of “talking to the inner critic” stuff.
And I’m thinking, oh, I’ve been doing this for so many years and I have my negotiators and my conversations with blocks and I know all my monsters …
So of course I already know that my inner critic just wants to protect me. Because we hang out and talk all the time. And I know it’s on my side. Blah blah blippity blah.
But then when we did the exercise, I learned something new.
The reason my critic is so obnoxious is that it (he? she?) really, truly wants me to be published.
And more than that: it feels conflicted about its mission.
Because what it really wants is for me to be able to stop caring about what other people think. And since it’s afraid I’ll never get there, it uses the external legitimacy thing because that’s what works.
Anyway, that was … useful.
Thing #3: This is not exactly news, but my standards? Way too high!
I watch these women. These amazing, bright, capable, loving women. I feel this deep, beautiful love for all of them.
It is so clear and obvious to me that they are writers. Of course they are.
I listen to their conditions and their rules and their shoulds about what a “real” writer is, and I just feel so much compassion.
And then I wonder at how strict I am with myself. How my shoulds are even more outrageous, absurd and un-live-up-to-able than theirs.
One woman says, “How can I call myself a writer when I haven’t written in months?”
And I’m thinking (not saying, of course), “What does that have to do with anything? You’re a writer in your soul. I see your pain and I see your stuck … and I also see the flow of words and wonder in you and that is enough. You are enough.”
And I can be completely in this love-and-acceptance thing.
And at the same time, I can be aware of the interesting fact that I write at least 90 minutes every single day and I still don’t think I get the right to use the W-word.
Who gets to decide? Who gets to let Writer Me out to play? Who gets to incorporate all aspects of herself into her life?
I do.
Thing #4: What is your name, critic?
This isn’t really a thing.
I’m just going to share one of the neat guided exercises we did where we interviewed our internal “no, you’re not good enough” voice and my responses. I mean, my critic’s responses.
Interviewer: What is your name, critic?
Answer: I am the protector. I keep you from knowing how they can hurt you.
Interviewer: If you were a color, what color would you be?
Answer: I am dark. I am light. I can hide.
Interviewer: How big are you?
Answer: Big enough. Big enough to block the pain.
Interviewer: What texture are you?
Answer: I am ever-changing. I am the wind. They can’t hold me.
Interviewer: What gender are you?
Answer: I am the Authority.
(Yes, my authority gets to decide who is an author, I get it, heavy-handed-mouse)
Interviewer: How have you come to be who you are?
Answer: I keep your words safe. Remember what happened when you showed your work? I don’t let that happen anymore.
Interviewer: What do you really want?
Answer: For you not to need anyone else’s approval.
Okay … comment zen for today.
Here’s what I want:
- Anything this stuff reminds you of.
- Your own experiences of Writer You or Dancer You or _________ You.
What I would rather not have:
- Shoulds. As in, “You should get over yourself” or “You should try x, y and z”
- To be judged or psychoanalyzed.
My commitment.
I commit to giving time and thought to the things that people say here, and to interact with their ideas and with my own stuff as compassionately and honestly as is possible for me.
Follow
I have written for 40 years, published a couple of books, written a several more, write most days, and yet I still have trouble with calling myself a writer and if I do, I always feel like I should apologize for saying it. Of course there are lots of lovely historic reasons for all this, but damn, it’s annoying! And wearying and time consuming and just plain sad.
.-= Elly Danica´s last post … Are you my ideal client? =-.
Just saying that I totally understand. I write a lot of stuff, and professional articles, but don’t feel like I can call myself a “Writer” until I have a story in The New Yorker, book of well-regarded poetry, etc. out. Something deep inside also says “this won’t happen because now you are a left-brained business person and you were never very “creative” anyway, because your visual artist relatives were “creative” (kinda flighty, etc.) and you are not like them.”
That’s my Authority, and I’d like it to go jump in a lake (but getting it to do that is taking some time). Why am I listening to it? I don’t HAVE to. Such are the mysteries of the too-long-taking process of unscrewing our own heads.
Havi,I’m saving a special pair of shoes in which to dance at your first book launch. 🙂
When I was a kid, I told everyone who asked (and some who didn’t) that I was a writer. And I wrote constantly. No-one told me I was a writer. I just knew it, in my soul, in my heart, in my blood.
Since then, even though I’ve published a couple of books, spent years when I wrote very little, and others when I’ve written pretty much every day, that inner sense of being a writer has never wavered. It isn’t dependent on external evidence of writerliness. . . it’s just part of who I am.
Sometimes we simply have to dial down those voices–inner and outer, uninvited and otherwise–to hear the pulse that whispers, “I’m a___________” It’s always true, that voice.
Love, Hiro
.-= Hiro Boga´s last post … Sunday Poem # 2 =-.
I also do the hierarchy thing it sounds like you are doing in Taos. I think to myself, Havi’s totally a writer – you can see, feel, and taste her well-written and widely read blog. Of myself, I think, yes, I write. I write a freakin’ dissertation several hours a day, but that’s different. I have published in an academic journal, but that’s different too. And I journal nearly every day. Totally different.
I have mixed feelings about this Rainer Maria Rilke quote from “Letters to a Young Poet”:
“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”
I once thought if I didn’t truly feel this way about writing, about becoming a WRITER, then I didn’t deserve it.
That’s changed.
Now I’m rather like Joan Didion, who says she writes to find out what she’s thinking. Writing, then, is a necessity for me. I write to know how I feel. I’m a writer in that sense.
Strange that you’d pick THOSE two words to include today… writer and dancer…
I always qualify my writer self with “I am a *technical* writer.” I mean, after all, that’s what I do for a living, and I’m usually too exhausted to write anything else other than instructions for my needlework designs (more tech writing) or blog… so a writer/writer? Nah. Taps Self on shoulder: “Umm.. Romilly-Gretchen person? Yes. You. You. Are. A. Writer. And what’s more, to badly mess up a Pirates of Penzance quote, you always were one.”
Dancer – now not so hard to admit. When I quit ballet for body shape and health reasons I suppressed it for a long time and was miserable. I couldn’t be a dancer, because society said I couldn’t dance the way I’d always wanted to. And I got sicker. Then I re-discovered bellydance. Of course I’m a dancer. “You clap. YOU clap.” (Long story. Maybe I’ll blog it sometime.)
Designer. Somehow I have no problem admitting that I’m a needlework designer. But to admit that also makes me an artist? OOOOH now there’s the blockage!
.-= G. Romilly´s last post … My not-quite-a-UFO pile =-.
I didn’t know I was a writer until I got out of school where I was constantly writing papers, including a dissertation. I didn’t immediately miss writing because I had a new baby to keep me occupied, but then I did miss it.
I might have known there was a writer wanting to get out because in the midst of upheaval caused by Hurricane Katrina, I kept telling everyone, “This will make a really great story once I know it has a happy ending.” Well it did- have a happy ending, and make a great story.
I find it fascinating all the tricks we’ll play on ourselves about what it means to be a ‘real’ whatever. “I’ll be a real writer when I finish a novel or get an article published.” But when that finally happens, we say, “Well that doesn’t count because… the publication is too little, or nobody read it, or my mother’s best friend’s cousin is the editor, or that was so long ago, etc. etc…”
.-= Liz´s last post … Do-Overs and High-Fives: The SpiderWoman Edition =-.
All the writing stories remind me of the interview I heard several years ago by one of the big names. (No, I can’t remember which one, durn it.) It struck me, because he said, (paraphrased) “if you write anything, you’re a Writer. And you slave and work at writing, and finish a novel. Then it gets sold and you become an Author. And that’s when it gets hard, because you have to go sell the book, talk about the book, and after a few interviews, you start thinking of yourself as an Author, and forget that you’re really a Writer, and that to be a Writer, you have to WRITE. That’s why so many people never publish a second book.”
It’s stuck with me. Wish I could remember who it was…
.-= G. Romilly´s last post … My not-quite-a-UFO pile =-.
Writer Me is difficult. I _am_ a writer, I can say that with confidence. I write a blog, I write fanfiction of various genres, I write original fiction of various genres, I try to write reviews.
But you see that part about original fiction? I never *show* it to anyone. Well, I show it to people and go “oh, this isn’t finished” or “oh, this is old”. I never take the plunge and say “this is finished, this is new, do you think I can sell it?”. I know I need to. (Need to? Want to. Should. Could.) But I just… Don’t. It’s not _good enough_ yet.
But my blog, my fanfiction, my reviews? Blog is just whatever I feel like writing as long as it’s mostly coherent. Reviews, well, they’re just another thing that go on my blog and as long as they get my point across and are coherent, rock on. Fanfiction is easy (not _easy_, really, but I *know* I can do it and do it well), and no one cares if I slammed out a piece in five minutes, wrote a piece while blitzing on coffee for five days then polished it for months, or wrote a piece and forgot about it for a year and just now found it again.
Then there’s the days when my mental issues combine for added fun and I get the “I suck, I suck so much, I have no idea why anyone likes me, I’m a fake, I will never amount to anything”. Yeah, those days are ‘fun’.
You know, instead of saying “I’m a writer,” I like to say that “I write.” Because saying “I am a W” feels a little self-aggrandizing. I get you.
“Interviewer: How have you come to be who you are?
Answer: I keep your words safe. Remember what happened when you showed your work? I don’t let that happen anymore.”
Hmm. Yesterday I became physically sick and I realized it’s because of my blog-fear-stuck. And then I started writing it out, why I can’t do it, and I found out why! The person who has always been with me throughout my life would take my secrets, and even non-secrets, and save them to have something to hurl at me during our copious arguments.
+ I am afraid what I write will come back to haunt me, be used against me by some creep, even I don’t write anything personal. Anything can be used against you–or manipulated into something to hurt you with +
Aaaahhhh!!!
So “Remember what happened when you showed your work? I don’t let that happen anymore.” — is pretty much what’s happening to me, even though in the past that stuff was said and not written. But I still feel it applies, right on.
The blog = stuff for ME, not what someone else asks me to write, gives me the topic and format for, but something mine, MY ideas. So if they were used against me, I might just crumble.
It probably was not a coincidence that yesterday morning I did shiva nata after a week off.
So I am trying to give myself permission to take as much time as I can while I can maybe work on the very hurtful stuck. I feel a little better already.
I am deeply thankful for all the support you provide us with. It’s a haven for many people. And we can access support for each other. I’ve met rad people through here. Your courage + love gets to us.
Ahh Writer Me. Right now I can only write in the tiny compose window in Gmail. It’s the only place that feels safe. It feels temporary enough to be ok.
But I’ll take it because I spent years not writing and being miserable about it but still not being able to, especially with echoes of ‘this was so easy for you in high school!’.
And then there’s the whole baggage that my father has laid on me that says “You can’t make money at it so why do it?” Been hacking away at the roots of that particular thorn bush for a while now. Write first, worry about money later. (Easier said than done.)
And then my Resistance says, “I’m not as good as Paul” and I wonder just when I started caring about not being as good as him!
Perfect timing on this article. Thank you! I have a much easier time saying “I am writing….” than to say “I am a writer.”
For several years, I was writing my thesis, now (that thesis is finished) I am writing my blog and rewriting my thesis so it can become a book. That is easy to say, but “I am a writer” is not.
For some reason to say I am a writer means I have to be paid to be a writer, that it’s only legitimate if I can make my living and pay my bills.
I’m not sure where this legitimacy thing is coming from, but for now I’ll have to be content to say I am writing…..
I have kept a box of business cards for a job I haven’t held in over a year because the job title on them says “writer,” despite the fact that I probably write more in my current job, both on and off the job.
I have a friend who is an Artist Working As A Veterinary Tech. I keep reminding her she is an Artist, partly because my mom was an Artist Hidden Behind a Homemaker, and I don’t want her to hide her Artistness.
.-= Kat´s last post … It’s all in the quality of construction. =-.
My inner critic was once an external critic. His name was Dad.
He said I’m not a writer unless I’m making a living at writing. Same with being an artist or a musician. He said I couldn’t major in art or music or humanities because I would starve to death.
I want to believe in myself again, but the only thing I feel talented in is what I do for a living. So that’s all I do.
The internal critics, the external critics, the experiences, the experimenting … super interesting.
My head is still spinning from all of the teaching and the learning, but I will reread all of this again and do some thinking on it.
Appreciating all your words!
Oh, my goodness, I hear you. I’ve been writing for almost thirty years (!! – I’m 34), and my critic doesn’t think I should call myself a writer because I’ve “only” published a handful of poems and short stories.
I am not my grandmother, who wrote more than fifty novels. I am not my aunt, who is one of Ireland’s most highly respected poets. I am not even my father, who has published two crime novels under a pseudonym. I haven’t even finished one novel, for crying out loud. (My critic says that this means I can’t claim that I even know if I’m capable of finishing a novel. Which is Bolsheviks.)
Thank you for posting this. I’ll be having some words with my critic soon, I think.
.-= Lean Ni Chuilleanain´s last post … Et Tu, Brute? =-.
Just last week I was catching up via email with an old friend from high school who I’ve always considered an artist. In my response to her, I wrote: “I haven’t been that productive, I’m afraid.”
She wrote back: “Your blog is wonderful! And you said you havent been productive? Shit- I appreciate the series of dance pix…”
Even after 4 years, still so hard for me to view my blog as a productive thing, a worthwhile expression of my writing and photography/art.
Part of me is very reluctant to define myself by way of profession(s). I’m not just a writer or a photographer or artist. The other part thinks it’s not legit if I don’t make money for those activities.
But “what do you do?” is such a rampant question, asked casually but used to find boxes of reference for people. Least that’s how it seems to me. Why else would people get adamant with me when I say, “I don’t have a good answer for that right now,” and then insist on knowing what I did before. What difference does before really make in casual conversation?
D’oh, stumbled onto a bit of trigger for me there… sorry.
.-= claire´s last post … The Problem With Polka Dots =-.
I have taken up and put down writing many times over the years. I remember working through Natalie Goldberg’s WRITING DOWN THE BONES and then deciding I just didn’t want to go through the effort anymore.
Sunrise, sunset, repeat…I once journaled a conversation with my Muse, dressed in the classical flowing Greek garb, who dwelled into a tiny clean cell because that was the only space I left her. She resented her banishment and so tortured me by letting me know she was there, but wouldn’t talk to me. I paid her several visits before she started trusting me again. I went through a mild depressive blue period which I think was caused by not exercising my creative side, however it wanted to be expressed.
My middle name is Eugene (yuck) but I ran across the published journals of the French painter Eugene Delacroix, and it was so inspiring. I journaled conversations with him, and he became a spiritual and creative mentor for a time.
After doing the Nat’l Novel Writing Month a few times, and then joining a writers group (where we ALL have day jobs), and just hanging out with people who really took the writing seriously, like it really mattered, I kind of woke up. Even though I’ve not published anything (hell, never mailed any of them out), I know now that writing is something I *DO*, I can’t shut off the words, I can’t stop looking at what’s happening to me in the third-person, wondering how I’ll describe in my journal or my blog.
I think it’s enough (and great) to say, “I’m Mike and I write.” I also draw, and make people laugh, and all sorts of other things. And I try to remember to stay in touch with my Muse, and see that she’s being well looked after.
.-= Mike´s last post … Dahl on travel and civilization =-.
feeling too stuck and crummy to elaborate much right now… hit a nerve. (possibly a big hormonal one, because the tears have started)
artist me.
I feel like Hiro, in that it feels undeniable. Yet my sketchbook is empty, new pens un-touched, website up with nothing but a name, blank canvases 3 years old, 15 lbs. of clay i’ve hauled around since 2000 lumpy globs in its box….
I’m having a hard time convincing myself I’ll ever get out from under bland administrative ‘business’ jobs… out of a damn office building. i have proof i’m good at that crap. I’ve done it more consistently than any form of artwork and that just flat out disgusts me.
I have no proof of artist me.
At least, it feels that way 99% of the time.
The people close to me start out with support and excitement and encouragement and every time I prove them wrong. I don’t give them anything to go on supporting or encouraging. I become a lost cause I guess. They all just get quiet and never mention or ask if I’m working on anything, or if artist me is still around…. but she is. she haunts me and has things to say and sometimes we get all excited and start something but then she disappears suddenly and here I am back in my big, ugly stuckness.
blech. Hugs please 🙁
.-= ilikered´s last post … here we go =-.
I do a lot of blogging, and I write for a bunch of websites for free. I keep telling myself I’ll be a “real writer” once I’m actually getting paid regularly–save the occasional $50 here and there for a freelance writing gig. But it’s SO MUCH EASIER for me to write for free–I don’t have to send queries, wait forever or deal with rejection. No risk, no reward… I guess! But the other part of the problem is that I want to *write* rather than spend all of my time marketing my writing. I would like to get over the fantasy of getting picked up by some magazine that wants a feature writer and ran across all of my online articles that I don’t get paid for… “Getting my name out” by writing for free has mostly led to other people wanting me to write for them for free. Hmmm…
.-= Yael Grauer´s last post … Preserving Summer Herbs and Spices! =-.
First, hugs to ilikered.
You hit a nerve here to, Havi: it is Researcher/Academic Me. Or even Professional Me. Does impostor syndrome ring any bells? I guess I’m too aware of the things I don’t know to feel comfortable about giving advice, writing down definite conclusions, even sending in my work to scientific journals. And then the dissertation…
Or maybe it is just my definition of what a Researcher/Academic/Professional is supposed to be that needs some attention. Reality check.
So there. That’s another thing on my list of things to work on.
Hugs for Ilikered. I’m sorry it’s so hard. I hope the wonderful things within you will keep trying to find their way out.
I like the internal critic interview. I could really do with some talks to my inner critic, I think. We don’t talk a lot, but I think they are behind some of my recent freakouts. Hm…
I find that adding in an adjective helps enormously.
Saying I’m a ‘freelance’ embroiderer somehow seems to remove any of the doubt and gives me ownership of my connection with my bit of creative turf.
I play samba and I’m really not especially good at it but I love it so fun-drummer-me is the bit that gets to say I’m musical.
Seems to work for me!
Havi (and all)– I go through the same thing. With ‘writer’ and ‘dog trainer’. To be certified as a dog trainer, you can either go to university and study animal behavior, take a class/program (anywhere from one week or two years), or simply fill out a form and pay a hundred bucks and get a certificate mailed to you from The Internet. I try to tell myself that it doesn’t matter that I haven’t done these things, I have REAL LIFE DOG EXPERIENCE and READ LIKE MY LIFE DEPENDS ON IT (because it does) and APPLY STUDIES TO PRACTICE every day. I have read just about every book on major course lists and my heroes are headliners in the field of compassionate animal behavior training techniques. Yet, when people ask what I do, I mutter, ‘I work with dogs’ and usually add a disclaimer like, “I know that probably sounds silly.”
.-= melissa´s last post … Humble Pie for Breakfast =-.
For me it would be the ‘A’ word….’Artist me’. Despite the fact I have been a ‘practicing’ and ‘professional’ photographer for over 20 years, it took a very long time to say the words ‘I am an artist’.
It wasn’t until I started working with acrylics and pastels that I began to be able to form the word ‘artist’, that my mouth would shape it and my throat and breathe and tongue could articulate it.
The acrylics and pastels seem to have been a passing phase that helped me deepen into my photographic ‘artistry’.
I’m still learning that just because something comes ‘easily’ or ‘naturally’ to me, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value. A thing doesn’t have to be impossibly hard for it to be good.
And right now at this red hot minute in my life, I don’t know anything. All bets are off. Up is down and in is out.
Ooo – good post esp. Things #1! these two comments combined really stand out for me (replace writer with artist or illustrator) & I love the J Dideon quote.. thank you… food for thought and my sketchbook I reckon 🙂
Dawn: I have mixed feelings about this Rainer Maria Rilke quote from “Letters to a Young Poet”:
“Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.”
I once thought if I didn’t truly feel this way about writing, about becoming a WRITER, then I didn’t deserve it.
That’s changed.
Now I’m rather like Joan Didion, who says she writes to find out what she’s thinking. Writing, then, is a necessity for me. I write to know how I feel. I’m a writer in that sense.
Lean:
I am not my grandmother, who wrote more than fifty novels. I am not my aunt, who is one of Ireland’s most highly respected poets. I am not even my father, who has published two crime novels under a pseudonym.
Wow – you really DO know how to talk about what needs to be talked about for your friends/followers/readers? I’m not so concerned with the how you do it, but damn you’re good!
The hippie and I had a long discussion about this last night. Why I went to the trouble of creating an anyone-can-see-this place to blog and then sat and waited for inspiration. It’s been months. And the creation of that blog has stopped me from posting in my hidden-been-doing-them-for years blogs.
The family has always said I would be a writer and boy oh boy do I have some stuck with blogging in a place where they can see. I don’t want to have a single explanation conversation with them.
So the hippie and I came to an agreement (based on what you told me earlier this month): I will start writing from the heart and I will first send it to him for review. He will review any comments that come through to eliminate the icky ones that might come from family. And maybe, just maybe, this will clear my block and get me to find my voice and start the ranting.
*fingers crossed*
Yay – I didn’t read the other fabulous comments by writers and and singers and other life-livvers in case my Writer Me refused to come out afterwards. So the treats are still to come, but oh yay Have thankyou (finally voiced, after all the other silent thankyous) !
Today my Writer Me was voiced, and heard, and voiced back by a wonderful partner on Mark Silver’s Heart of Money course .. and I quaked… and I still have all the other treats of my own further discoveries in store.. but Pandora’s Writer Box has been opened… the silent voice has begun to un-stick herself. And somehow I’m so glad to read these words here today of all days.
Hugs-of-the-not-so-silent-variety
.-= Lindsay McLeod´s last post … Silent Voice =-.
I realize that it may sound a little bit arrogant and on the verge of the external legitimacy thing but what I really mean is a good intentioned comment coming from your right people.
You are a writer because people who enjoy reading, enjoy reading you. I’ve been reading books all my life. I believe that I even managed to overcome The Wonderful Mountain at some point of my life. I am really very picky when choosing what blogs to read… and I am huge fan of yours. So, you are a writer – trust me. You are both insightful and fun. And although your posts are a little bit long-ey for a journal thing, they are still very entertaining. This by itself is a great “writer – thing” to achieve.
.-= helen´s last post … ÐšÐ¾Ñ Ðµ най-ÑтреÑиращата гледка на плажа? =-.
I’m once again in catching up mode, and I’m late in catching up with your blog because I was keeping it for dessert! It was lovely to read this post and be back in Taos for a moment… It was a wonderful experience, and I’m really happy I got to share parts of it with you. I can’t wait to see you again!
.-= Josiane´s last post … Retreating to write – and being treated to so much more =-.