I am not afraid of success. For some reason that idea makes me angry, makes me furious, makes me enraged. I can’t remember who said it, but it’s a commonplace that haunts me, that was thrown at me once, and I don’t even know what it means. Here it is: I am afraid of failing, of getting trapped in silence. Worse: what if I open my mouth to speak, or sing, and the song that comes out is croaked and broken, people can’t bear to listen to it, they wander away, and now they know two things they didn’t know before: how bad my voice is, and how much I wanted to be listened to. Wouldn’t it be better to bake cakes? Everybody likes cake. Isn’t this a fool’s game, the path of egomaniacs, narcissists, dreamers?
My writing practice is about becoming comfortable with that fear, touching its bristly, oily fur, running my fingers behind its ears, learning not to back away from it, learning to get past it, and sit down at the table and work.
Tag: Fear
I saw the finale of Big Love yesterday. When I tried to tell Jesse about it this morning I cried, talking about the old couple, Frank and Lois, lying together on her bed, with the syringe and vial beside them on the table. What made me cry was the long view I had of their relationship, because I have been watching them not just for two hours, but for five years, long enough to have my own old memories of their marriage. They fought every day, regularly tried to kill each other, and then Frank did end up killing her in the end, not because he hated her, but because he loved her. He held her like a child and told her stories as she died, knowing that after she was gone he would have nothing left in the world. She was his last thing and he let her go, because she asked him to help her, and she was suffering.
Big Love worked for me because in addition to being about family, it was a story about a man with a huge ambition– to make polygamy, that crazy idea, legitimate and legal. In each season Bill took that goal further, raising the stakes– not just to be safe, but to come out of the closet; not just to come out of the closet, but to win a senate race, to wipe out the snake pit of his childhood, to change the law so that other polygamist families could live out in the world without fear. Polygamy is a cool arena. But what gives the series life is the protagonist’s driving goal, to make polygamy legitimate in the world. It’s a story about family, and all the challenges that any family has. But they aren’t just drifting along having their daily struggles. Bill keeps pushing them all forward, towards a more difficult, risky, impossible end.
If your worst fear is writing the wrong thing, and then you write the wrong thing, there is much less to be afraid of. You realize the world doesn’t end. You feel terrible for a couple of days, and then you call your brother, the artist, and he says, I know what that’s like, when you’ve been working on a painting and you finally realize it’s time to stop, even though you never got it. And you call your agent, and he says, yeah, this is hard work, isn’t it?
When the worst thing has happened, there’s no more bartering, or striving, pleading or hoping. You just roll up your sleeves and start paying attention, being present, try to figure out where you are.
By quitting, I declare myself: I was not happy. That was not my world. That was not my voice. Which brings me one step closer to a world I want to write.