Office Hours

A question about mediocrity (from someone who clearly isn't)

Q.

It's taken me a while to figure out why I'm not writing much these days. And I'm pretty sure it's my old friend, fear. I think I fear that I won't write anything worthy of sending out into the world. Of course, there's no way to know if I don't try, but I can feel the fear stopping me. Here's the truth: I'm a mediocre writer, though I've had some (publishing) success. I fear that I will always be mediocre, and that "mediocre" is me reaching my potential. How can I be okay with that? How can anyone press on, putting words to paper, when they know they'll never rise to the top? I realize this may be as dumb as telling myself I shouldn't learn the piano because I'll never be a concert pianist, so why try? But writing feels different. I don't want to be president of the Mediocre Writers Club. But all evidence points exactly there. (Would I even be president? Maybe not.) Oh, what to do? How to start again, over and over? My motivation is at zero. Writing sounds exhausting. Maybe you and Story Clubbers can give me a pep talk.

Signed,

The Depressed Writer

A.

Dear Depressed Writer,

Well, this is very insightful letter, full of an admirable level of self-awareness.  Thanks for being so frank and articulate and, if it’s any help, I’m guessing many, if not all of us, have felt the same way.

And I agree: why work as hard as one has to, to be a writer, if one was pre-convinced the result would be, as you put it, “mediocre.” 

So, first, maybe, let’s reformulate “fear” as “respect for the craft.”  Part of your mind isn’t entirely happy with the writing you’ve done, and knowing the kind of work it hopes to produce (i.e., exceptional, original) it feels hesitant to go forward.  In this sense, your mind is being a good artistic friend to you.  It’s throwing up a warning signal, saying, in essence, “This approach has, in the past, produced results with which we are not thrilled.  Before we launch in, might we want to reconsider some things?  So we don’t end up in the same situation?”

So, you know: thank you, mind, for pointing this out and thereby giving us a chance to alter course.

One way to begin this exploration might be to lightly ask: What is it that makes you think you have to go on trying to be a writer?  And I don’t mean that in that crotchety, old, “Maybe you should not be writing” way, but, rather, as a first step in inquiring about the basic foundation of your desire to write.

We don’t have to write.  We really don’t.  I sometimes remind myself of that, just so that the writing I do will be joyful rather than dutiful.  (“I could quit, I could.  Life would still be interesting and rich and all of my energy would just go…elsewhere.)

But, I’d say, one really good reason to go on, is if we feel there’s something that we ourselves know, or have experienced, that we haven’t yet seen manifest in our writing — or, for that matter, in other people’s writing.  (This is in keeping with Toni Morrison’s beautiful explanation that, when she wrote The Bluest Eye, she was writing the book she wanted to read but hadn’t been able to find.) 

I suspect this is your goal, too, just based on your invocation of “mediocrity” as a metric: “I feel I am mediocre,” is just another way of saying: “Hey, I want to be great.”

You want to do something truly original.  And bravo to that. 

Which leads us to a second point. 

How do we know what we have to say?  Ideally, according to me, we don’t.  We write to find out.  We have faith that, in the process of trying to make our work better “locally” (in the phrases and jokes and transitions and so on) we will blunder into something new, something that only we could have said, something “original.”

So, what I hear you saying (and this, too, is very familiar to me) is that you’ve developed an approach, you’ve had some success using that approach – but you feel a little trapped by, or within, your method.  Past results have been, by your standards, “mediocre.”  You look ahead and feel that forthcoming results, produced by that method, will, similarly, fail to thrill you. (“Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes.”)

Fair enough and, again, very insightful, and also you show real bravery by being able to see these things about your work and articulate them.

Now what? 

Let’s examine this idea of being trapped by our own method.  What does it mean?  Well, it means we’ve internalized certain ideas about what constitutes “writing” and “rewriting” and “revising.” There are ways of doing these things that we, now, take for granted, almost to the extent that we’re unaware that we’re using them.

Built into those methods, are limits.  It’s kind of like this: every time a person goes for a run, she throws on some shoes, which turn out to be heavy hiking boots.  The run is, of course, inflected by that choice of footwear. 

In our analogy, she doesn’t even notice she’s put those shoes on.   

So: can we do some thinking together about what those “hiking boots” (our slightly stale methods and assumptions) are, and how we might go about throwing them out the window? 

And here, of course, I’m not just talking to Depressed Writer, but to all of us who are hopeful that the work we’ve done will be surpassed by the work that is coming.

Let’s examine that moment just before we start writing.  As I think I’ve mentioned here before, we might imagine that there’s a cartoon balloon above our head – a sort of preset state that our mind is in as we get set to go.  It’s ambient, almost invisible; there might be a certain sound in our head we’re trying to emulate; there might be an intention there (“I want my work to {fill in the blank.}”) Most certainly, these things exist beneath language.  The mind might be very quiet, and yet, down deep, there is some trace of intention, of habit, of “here is how I am to proceed.”

There you are, looking at a blank page.  It’s writing time!  What does your mind incline you to do just then, just before you actually put something down?  This is a big moment.  And, admittedly, hard to talk about.  (This process of asking, “What’s happening up there?” is somewhat akin to meditation, in that we are attempting to use our mind to see how our mind works.)

But try it: sit down with the intention of starting a new story and see where your mind is.  What are you leaning into?  What are you intending to do?  What is the basis for typing?  So much of what comes out on the page, has to do with that split-second of what we might call “pre-intending.”

We can fall into certain familiar habits at this stage – I mean, of course we can.  (How could we not?) But that state of mind quickly becomes assumed and, therefore, vanishes, to us – it’s like water to the fish, in that famous David Foster Wallace bit:  Old fish to young fish:  Water’s nice today.  Young fish: What’s water?

So….take a look. What’s happening up there, just before you start to write?

Now (part two) take something you’ve written and get ready to revise it.  What’s your mind like in that instant?  How is it approaching its task?  What little stories is it telling itself about, you know, Revision Theory?  Is there some desired voice it’s seeking to make, or find, as it edits?  On what basis will it be making those cuts and additions and adjustments?  How much will it allow you to consider cutting?  Are there certain blind spots, that are removing portions of the writing from full consideration? (“This has been great for two weeks – I can therefore skim it.”)

In all of this, there’s no preferred mindset.  What we’re trying to do is make ourselves aware of the fact that we have an habitual mindset.

We do, of course.  We all do.

And that mindset is the cause of what we will write and how we will edit.

If the results our habitual method is producing are, we feel, “mediocre,” well, one approach might be to change that mindset.

Sounds good, but how to do it?

Well, I think just taking a good hard (but friendly, but curious!) look at our mindset, as above, can be a really good start.  That alone can sometimes shake things up.  And by “mindset,” again, I’m talking about pre-assumptions; our ambient pre-assumptions about what good prose is, about how to proceed, about what the aims of fiction are, and so on.

These exercises we’ve tried here before – especially that 200/50 word exercise, but also, more generally, any exercise that applies obstructions and constraints — can, at least, make us aware that we do indeed have such presets.  (By forcing upon us some awkward new method, these exercises show us how addicted we are to our usual method.) 

And yet, these exercises are, admittedly, unlikely to produce pieces that can be sustained.  The results often sound strange and strained.  They do, however, at least show the writer that she contains more than just that one voice that her habits usually lead her to produce.

So: disrupt old habits, possibly by imposing on yourself some arbitrary new ones. Write a story in which the letter “e” is not allowed. Write a list of all your beliefs about fiction, and then write a story that contradicts the most dearly held of those beliefs. Deliberately imitate another writer. Ask a friend to suggest an idea for a story, one she knows you will hate. Then write that story.

In other words: believe that your natural approach is just the one you’ve settled on; there are others, and if you undertake to write a story by a new method, you talent will rise up and fill that vessel.

Because that’s what talent does.

Another thing I sometimes suggest is this: stop writing.  That is, stop doing your “real” writing.  Yank yourself out of your usual daily routine.  Instead, today, off the top of your head, write one sentence.  Don’t think about what it should be about, or any of that.  Just slap some crazy stuff down on the page.  (Or it can be sane stuff.  The “slapping down” is the key.)  Print it out.  Then, go do something else and, over the next 24 hours, do your best not to give that sentence a single thought. 

Next day, at about the same time, sidle very casually back to your desk and slide that sentence over in front of yourself, read it – and see if any changes or expansions naturally occur to you.  I emphasize “naturally.”  These changes should sort of pop spontaneously into your head; they should not be the result of any thinking or deciding or theorizing or planning. 

Then, make those changes, print it out again, go back, carefree, into the world, have your day.

Once you get a little bulk built up – a paragraph or so – give yourself permission to sit there a little longer.  But don’t let your old habits back in.  You are still just reading to feel, impulsively, what you might want to do next. (For fun, or for no reason at all that you can name.)  Even the smallest adjustment counts. (Take out a comma = a good day’s work.)

But, with the increased time, get a little bolder.  Start moving phrases around, cutting things out.  Don’t worry about making sense, or where the story is going, or its eventual themes, or how it fits in with your previous work, or any of that.  You are trying, really trying, to get in touch with the look of the words on the page and the sound of them.  And, in that way, with your own taste. 

What do you (even slightly) prefer?  And don’t worry about why you prefer it. 

You are, more than you ever have been before, merely playing.  You don’t know what you’re seeking, other than: “I am trying to make it such that, when I read this tomorrow, I will like it (even a little) more than I did when I read it today…for reasons I don’t have to explain.”

No matter what happens, resist the urge to, one day, say, “Ah, nice exercise, George.  It’s really done the trick for me. So much so, that I am now going to abandon it and finish this baby off, in the way I know how to do (i.e., by my usual method).”

No: just keep picking at that growing prose swath a little every day, until you can’t stand it, until you are ready to email me and ask for grateful permission to abandon the experiment.

And then — don’t email me. Rather, keep picking at it…in that same intuitive, for-fun, preference-emphasizing, planning-averse, mindset.

Keep going and going until you’ve written a whole story from that mindset.

Consider this: what if this experimental mode is exactly equal to the real mode, to your real mode?  What if writing in this new, by-your-feelings, mode is what real writers actually do (or at least some of us do)? 

This goes back, maybe, to our earlier discussion of “freakification.”  Sometimes, we disappoint ourselves in our work because we know too well what we want it to do.  This knowing functions as a sort of automatic failure guarantee.  It’s kind of like saying to someone, “Go ahead, surprise me,” and then going, “But not like that.” 

In this new mode I’m describing, the only goal is to make something that (as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say), “You dunno what it is.”  We are trying to find a new DNA by which our work can function, and we are having faith that finding newness in four consecutive lines is exactly equal to finding newness in a whole story.  (A whole story is just a bunch of four-line groups, after all).

The great Gilda Radner. Photo Credit: NBC

This approach might especially suit someone like our Depressed Writer, who has, it seems to me, a wonderfully acute analytical mind.  That sort of mind can (from someone who also tends to analyze too much, ahem) really trip us up.  That kind of mind doesn’t want any other part of the mind to get out ahead of it — it wants to have the final say on everything.  (It only feels it knows something when it can successfully articulate it.) But the part of the mind from which we write isn’t (or isn’t purely) analytical.  It’s intuitive and subversive and thrill-seeking.  It aims to entertain, or at least involve, the reader.  It knows what it’s doing even when the analytical part can’t keep up with it and doesn’t know how to categorize or explain what’s happening. 

Finally (one more approach). I would like to ask our Depressed Writer: “When you characterize your work as ‘mediocre’ - can you be more specific? At what moments do you feel that? What, precisely, is “mediocre” about it?

Sometimes just answering this question directly can do some work in freeing ourselves from it.

As in:

Patient: It hurts when I do this.

Doctor: Don’t do that.

Along these lines…I once went to a songwriting seminar and the teacher said that, whenever he finished a song and was pleased with it, he’d right away go and listen to one of his favorite Dylan songs….just to “feel the difference.” We all groaned. But he insisted that this was a valuable thing to do. In that instant of feeling the distance between our work and the work of one of our heroes, he claimed, there was the possibility of some real instantaneous wisdom happening - just by juxtaposition.

All right, I’ll pause here, to ask if any of this is making sense to anybody other than me.

But also: one more thank you to “Depressed Writer” for having the courage to bring this up, and for having done so in such an articulate and generous way – because, as mentioned above, this is a question every serious artist must deal with.