Creativity and Doubt

So, if Peter Carey can doubt himself: here and even the great Eric Carle can have an attack of creative crisis: here, I guess it's just something that I have to accept as part of the job!

Here are another couple of inspiring speakers who talk about these very same things. The wonderful Sir Ken Robinson, who has written a book about finding your passion: here and Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love (which I am yet to read) here.

There is something so vulnerable about making your creative life your professional life, as if your job demands you to turn yourself inside out, all your tenderest most intimate thoughts and ideas on show for all the world to see and judge. But would I have it any other way? There have been times when I have wondered. But then the realisation that I am in the incredibly rare and privileged position of making a living from something I am passionate about, in a situation where I am working almost every day doing something that I love, overrides all the possible downsides, and, once again I am grateful for what I have.

Procrastination

Well, I am really supposed to be working on my novel right now - only two and half days til my kids break up from school!! - but what does any procrastinating writer do when they hit a wall? Blog! So, here I am.

Earlier this month I was fortunate enough to participate in a brilliant masterclass at the Victorian Writers' Centre run by Antoni Jach, with a formidably talented and incredibly supportive bunch of fellow writers and, in the days following the course, boy, you couldn't stop me! I was churning out those words. But then, as to be expected, I had one crap day of writing and suddenly all my momentum goes down the drain. Now I approach my computer with a horrible mixture of fear and trepidation. When I read back over all those thousands of words that spilled out of me, will I be horrified to discover that they are all crap! That really, I have no idea what I am doing or where I am going?

I don't know about other writers but I constantly swing between feeling like a genius and a complete waste of space. There doesn't seem to ever be much in between. It's such a deeply personal and vulnerable thing to write, even if you are doing so behind the veil of fiction, that I find it almost impossible to be able to judge my work myself. Apparently, according to Antoni, writers become better at this over time - but this self-awareness and confidence is unfortunately still a long way off for me.

However, I am always comforted by the words of Peter Carey in despairing times like these:

'The whole business of writing is to live with doubt: to do what you don't know how to do, to place yourself continually in a situation of ignorance and inelegance. When you begin writing you're in a basic state of stupidity because you don't know anything.'

I figure if even PC feels like this after all those book sales and awards under his belt, I'm probably not alone.

Have a Merry Christmas everyone and if, like me, you're trying to write with a houseful of kids, my sympathies go out to you. :-)