For some reason \u2013 probably that we all love words \u2013 last week\u2019s email generated the biggest response I\u2019ve had for a while. A lot of you have a quite prodigious vocabulary and I raise my hat to you all. Or rather: I raise my hat, my cap, my boater, my beret, my trilby, my cloche, my helmet, my tricorn, my deerstalker, my pillbox and my elegantly laced yet somehow menacing fascinator.<\/p>\n
All your responses were interesting \u2013 they always are \u2013 but one really hit home. Someone tipped me off about a TED talk by Elizabeth Gilbert. (The link\u2019s in the PSes, if you\u2019re interested.)<\/p>\n
The gist of her talk was this:<\/p>\n
Writers get frightened of being writers.<\/strong><\/p>\n We\u2019ll get too much success<\/em>! The success will eat us. We\u2019ll never be able to perform under commercial pressure. I couldn\u2019t work with an agent, an editor, a publicist, a host of foreign publishers.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll get too much failure<\/em>! We can\u2019t do our best work thinking about those rejection letters, thinking about those bozo Amazon one-star reviews. We can\u2019t create with joy and spontaneity when we have to tangle with the complicated limbs of the publishing industry.<\/p>\n Or some other reasons. Or some set of mutually contradictory reasons.<\/p>\n It doesn\u2019t matter what, really. The point is: writers get frightened of being writers.<\/p>\n This is, as Gilbert points out, a panic largely confined to the creative arts. Her dad was a chemical engineer, who never got frightened of chemical engineering. My father was a lawyer and a judge, who never got frightened of being a lawyer and a judge. I seriously if most plumbers doubt they can do their best bathroom-installation work under the pressure of a client wanting a new bathroom.<\/p>\n So what\u2019s going on? And how to combat the panic?<\/strong><\/p>\n Her take is interesting and, I think, has real merit.<\/p>\n Back before the Enlightenment and, especially, before the Romantics, we didn\u2019t think of people being geniuses, but having geniuses. Creativity and inspiration dwelled somewhere outside \u2013 as a Muse, perhaps, an actual spirit. In Latin, genius loci<\/em>, the spirit of a place, was something that dwelled at a given site, the divine spirit given specific form and nature.<\/p>\n The human\u2019s work was therefore not to be\u00a0<\/em>the genius, but to listen to<\/em> the genius. To catch the music and set it down.<\/p>\n That sounds a little spacey if you put it as bluntly as that. And yet \u2013 you will all know what it feels like to be in true creative flow. The words just come. The vision. The characters. The dialogue. To be sure, it doesn\u2019t come down perfectly: you still need to edit the damn thing. You still need to use your brain and craft to shape the material. But it feels like the origin of all that good stuff lies outside you \u2013 or, at the very least, way outside your conscious ownership or control.<\/p>\n Contrast that experience with the post-Romantic concept of genius: It\u2019s us! We\u2019re special! We\u2019re brilliant! We wear floppy clothes and drink laudanum!<\/em><\/p>\n There\u2019s a me-me-me quality here, which gets all the benefits of genius (aren\u2019t I wonderful, darling?<\/em>) but all of the costs as well (what if the damn work doesn\u2019t come? What if it\u2019s no bloody good?<\/em>)<\/p>\n Now I don\u2019t really want to argue about the ontology here. (Ontology = the study of what exists.) So is there really an external genius? Or a part of our subconscious? Or just a free-flowing form of imagination we can access in the right mental state only? I don\u2019t really care.<\/p>\n What Elizabeth Gilbert suggests we do is just separate the things. You showing up for work: that\u2019s the part you\u2019re in charge of. The creative genius may choose to turn up that day, or may not. You know damn well that if you don\u2019t come, the creative genius can\u2019t.<\/p>\n But you can\u2019t control that part. You never could, never did. Your job is to show up for work and apply yourself.<\/p>\n Just make sure to leave the window open a little, and maybe have a little dish of rose petals somewhere on the desk beside you. Geniuses love hard-workers \u2013 and who doesn\u2019t love a rose petal? If you want to say a prayer – and that Liz Gilbert, she loves a prayer – then say a prayer. Invite the genius. Or swear at it. Or just communicate. You might just get blessed, once again, by that golden hand, that silver tongue.<\/p>\n Go well my friends. Bite into those PSes. They\u2019re chewy this week, but with a soft caramel centre.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For some reason \u2013 probably that we all love words \u2013 last week\u2019s email generated the biggest response I\u2019ve had for a while. A lot of you have a quite prodigious vocabulary and I raise my hat to you all. Or rather: I raise my hat, my cap, my boater, my beret, my trilby, my<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n