Deciding to Do It

The Mind of a Novelist Writing a Useful Review (Seven Sugges...

Deciding to Do It

Does this sound familiar? You have a friend, relative, or co-worker who often mentions how much he or she wants to write a book / go skydiving / sail around the world (etc.) but whenever you offer a word of support and encouragement, he or she starts to explain why it’s impossible and will never happen.

Where does this brand of self-defeatism come from? I see it often, and I have a theory.

There is something truly scary about contemplating the actualization of a fond daydream, because the choice to make it happen is also the choice to yank it out of the sweet, soft, glowing perfection of idealized fantasy and thrust it into the harsh light of reality. Under this unflattering illumination, defects glare. Out here in the world of corporeal, temporal experience, things are messy. They’re dirty. They have pits, cracks, and stains. While the idle wish consists of only the good parts, the fulfillment of that wish includes all the rest of it—the awkward moments, the embarrassments, the failures, the boredom. Everything.

For some, it’s preferable to cling to a cherished fiction rather than be disappointed by a mixed truth. It’s not hopelessness; it’s a defense mechanism. They’re protecting themselves from the inevitable disappointment of a dream coming true and not measuring up to the hype.

Is this grim view justified? Depends on how you look at it. When you satisfy your ambition, will the result be everything you imagined? Of course not. Nothing ever is. Life doesn’t work that way. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. And who knows? In some ways, it might be better than you expected.

To my way of thinking, the flaws and blemishes are not just an inevitable component of any worthwhile undertaking, they are part of the richness of human experience, and should be embraced.

So given the choice to wallow in visions of frosty cocktails and hammocks strung between swaying palm trees while chained eternally to the dull safety and comfort of a land-bound life vs. maybe being a little cold, a little wet, a little inconvenienced, a little sleep-deprived, and yes, sometimes even a little annoyed while making an unexpected repair during an ocean crossing, I will still choose to cross the ocean. It’s fun to imagine receiving a literary award or being interviewed by Terry Gross, but being a writer is not about those things; it’s about spending eight hours revising a single paragraph until you’re so sick of it you never want to see it again. Sure, the abstract concept of skydiving is an adrenalized blur of excitement, but as a seasoned jumper who spends weekends at the drop zone, you might have a day where a poorly executed formation attempt culminates with an ungraceful landing in front of your friends. Everyone has one of those days from time to time, whether you’re a bestselling novelist, a parachutist with a thousand jumps in your logbook, or a sailor who has crossed every ocean on the planet.

Psychologists talk about a phenomenon called “effort aversion.” We don’t like the idea of work. It’s not appealing. We dread it. Anyone who has ever tried to write anything, even a short assignment for freshman English, knows that it’s hard. And it never gets any easier. We love the notion of having written a book; we’re not necessarily crazy about the prospect of writing it. That reluctance is rationally founded; as anyone who has ever written a book knows, it ain’t exactly a walk in the park—not for the author, certainly not for the author’s friends and family. But most things worth doing aren’t easy, and there is some solace in every writer’s true goal: no, not the royalty check, not the good review, not the prizes and recognition—just being finished, dammit!