Writing Wednesday: What Are You Afraid Of?

When talking about my frustrations with my writing process, which is generally writing drafts of new projects rather than focusing on trying to fix a project that someone has shown interest in or that I love, a friend asked me, "What are you afraid of, Mette?" I don't usually think of myself as someone who reacts out of fear and at first, my response was to say, I'm not afraid of anything. I'm fearless. It's the world and everyone who is just being stupid, not appreciating the way that I am.

And then a few days and a few weeks later, I sat with that scary thought. What am I afraid of? What is it that I am trying to avoid by doing what I am doing? I think we all avoid things. I'm not a procrastinator by nature. I tend to do jobs as quickly as possible that I dislike and that have a deadline so I can get them out of the way. But in the creative world, it doesn't quite work like that. You can seem to very busy and actually be doing nothing that will actually work for your career at all. Which is me absolutely. I like to say at the end of the day, I have these word counts. That means I'm working hard. That means I'm doing my job as a writer. That means I'm good.

I am desperate for the kind of approval that I used to get in school and that really you only ever get in school. Teachers who give you "A"'s. I used to love that. Do this, remember that, write this paper. Get an A. But the problem is, real life isn't all that much like school. Real life doesn't have a defined rubric of how to get a good grade. A real job doesn't give you an example of how to solve the problem. You have to invent the solution all on your own. If someone else knew how to fix it, they'd do it themselves. That's what your job is. To figure out how to do it right and there's no answer anywhere. In fact, even when you do it right, no one will really know if it's really right. It may be years later before the real proof comes in. It may be never. Certainly no one is going to come up to you and say, You get an "A" as a writer or you get an "A" as an engineer. There are job performance reviews in some jobs, but do those mean anything? I don't see a lot of truth in them. And sometimes people who are bad get fired or laid off and sometimes people who are good face the same fate. No guarantees.

As a writer, you can surround yourself with a community of writers and friends who will read your writing and tell you you're doing a good job or give you a nudge on where to fix things. You have an editor and an agent who might tell you the same thing. You have readers who will give feedback, and reviewers who do the same. You might win awards. You might make money. But there are great books that don't win awards. I daresay there are great books that are never even published because they are, in fact, so great that no one understands them yet. And there are crappy books that sell a lot and fifty years later no one remembers. Or they do. Who knows?

One of the things I am afraid of is that I am not good enough. I want to get an "A" in writing, but there is no such thing. And maybe that is what I am afraid of most of all, that I will never actually receive the approval that I want, and that I ultimately have to figure out a way to give it to myself. I have to stop looking around, trying to figure out what the teacher wants and giving it to her or him. I have to look inside, ask myself if this is what *I* want and move on.

And also, I have to live with the imperfections that become apparent as a writer works through a second draft. For me, if I work through a first draft quickly enough, I don't have time to notice the flaws. And that's the way I like it, having this illusion that my ideas are great and that I don't need to work on them. Because working on my writing is really hard work. I've always had trouble motivating myself to revise except when I have an editorial letter waiting for me. Then it's like I have a teacher again. But the problem really is that I may sometimes be using the editorial letter the wrong way, too, and not looking inside myself for the answers, which is the only place they can be.

The scariest thing about being a writer? There is no "A." It's not just that I don't know how to get it, it's accepting that the real world is a place where you just do your best and you never know if it's any good at all. Because there isn't really any objective system of measuring such a thing. There never will be and it would be a terrible thing if there were, especially for a creative person. I mean, I got into writing because I wanted to live in a world with fewer constraints, and yet I am so used to them, that I pull those expectations in with me. Here in this world, the only kudos that matter are the ones that you give yourself. And they come from within, where I am not used to looking.