Welcome to Bat Poo Crazy, episode 2, the impact of emotional health on your creative side.
Summary
Where we’ve been
Episode One: I hinted at my history of panic attacks that descended on me after a successful elementary school career. These panic attacks profoundly shaped my life in general and as a writer, which has been my chosen career path.
Episode one also covered imposter syndrome, snarky people, self snarkiness, and fear of failure. These effects are magnified by social anxiety. And these are effects that kept me, and maybe you, from the success I would like as a writer, or for that matter, it kept me from complete success at any endeavor.
Where we’re going
Episode one also hinted at the work it takes to write what people will be drawn to read.
Episode 2 focuses on barriers to being a writer, including:
- Not feeling like you are, or you even deserve to be, successful.
- The anxiety whisperer in your head.
- The need to create the mindset that you are a writer
- Some ideas for believing in yourself.
- Should you try to be the brilliant but troubled writer?
Let’s start with:
Why you might want to be a writer
Getting to be more than a few years ago, I signed up for an online script writing class through Coursera. I wasn’t able to stick with the class for various reasons.
But I did get a welcome to letter.
“Dear Eric E Stene
(They used my middle initial. Wow, there are so many great writers who go by initials. Sent chills down my spine!. But consider the rest of the letter:
“Writing is a truly beautiful, magical thing. You think of ideas and concepts, you write them down and somehow you have created a story and characters that have a life. Your characters speak and their words have meaning to those who read them. Your writing will enrich the lives of others. What could be more wonderful?
Cheers, David”
But it doesn’t happen by magic
If you want to write, you have to put in time writing. If you want to be a writer, not only do you have to write, you have to nurture the writer side of you. And, before you can nurture your writerly persona, you have to build a sense of what it means to you to be a writer.
If you follow sports, or if you hate sports, you probably realize that if you want to be a football player, you have to play football, if you want to call yourself a golfer, you gotta play a lot of golf.
And, as I have recently experienced, despite how easy it might look to the untrained eye, if you wanna be a bowler, you have to bowl. My lack of bowling prowess is too sad to relate.
My goal through these blog entries is to share some insight into the challenges and solutions to making writing a regular part of my life. This is also the story of how I achieved early writerly success, lost it, and now how I am working my way back.
Let’s start with:
You gotta feel it to believe it
Being interested in writing has given me a lifetime of circumstantial observation that there are any number of trying to be writers and marginally successful writers who are also being held back by personal challenges.
These personal challenges may include general anxiety, social anxiety disorder (SAD), depression, poor self-confidence and/or a variety of other emotional / mental health issues.
By the way, I deliberately used the rather awkward phrase trying to be writers. I feel that the more common wanna be is a bit condescending. You’ve probably heard the phrase. She’s a wanna be writer. I don’t like it.
One of the barriers to writerly success is internalizing what it means to write and to be a writer. Let me compare that idea with a seldom considered aspect of one of America’s favorite pastimes. That pastime is, of course, guns.
Guns and writing
In my newspaper writing days I interviewed a retired Marine colonel, name lost in my cobwebby file cabinet of clippings. He taught a firearms course in an adult ed setting. His course didn’t include target shooting or even touching a gun.
His premise was anyone can buy a gun and cause it to shoot bullets. For my analogy consider that you can also buy a writing device, be it computer, pencil, or, hey, if you’re so inclined and can find one, a typewriter. You can then use your device to string words together into sentences and paragraphs.
But, the central point our Marine colonel aimed to get across in his class was just because you purchase a gun for security, are you really of a mind set to use it if you have to?
He maintained that if you wait to wrestle with your conscience and hesitate in a life or death situation with your gun in hand, and a bad guy with gun in hand doesn’t hesitate, It could cost you your life.
Right now, you’re probably wondering:
Is writing really life or death?
Of course, the writing situation isn’t quite so dire. But you do have to ask, am I really of a mind set to put myself out there in words for others to critique, scorn, laugh at, or, perhaps worst of all, ignore?
Fear of standing out is one of my personal demons. I can relate to the impulse to hide my writing from the world.
And, remember, as I noted in Episode One, words can really hurt. Are you ready to take the chance that your writing will hurt, or embarrass someone?
You may not have given much thought to this issue of getting your head around your writing and what you are trying to accomplish with it.
But, for me, not always having a clear direction to my life has helped me add my layers to the:
Great mountain of unfinished writing
I think this lack of defining what it means to write and to be a writer, has much to say about why an estimated ninety seven percent of people who start a novel never finish.
And I would guess unfinished novels are the tip of a writing iceberg. How many short stories, magazine articles, poems, movie and tv scripts are there that never see the light of day? I have my share buried in deep dark files.
Our colonel’s goal was that his students would end up with either an internalized understanding of if and when they would without hesitation use a gun.
Or they might make an informed decision to not acquire a gun for security.
None of us are likely to kill anyone with our writing. On second thought, I have read a few things that were almost lethally confusing or boring.
But writing does require nurturing an I’m going take it to the end mindset.
Getting ideas for writing is not my writing challenge. Ideas are constantly flowing through my head, sometimes it feels like 24/7. My challenge is finishing, putting things out there.
I will cover my ideas on getting ideas in Episode 7, Turning observations into ideas.
In the meantime let’s continue developing that writerly mindset. By dealing with:
Snarky people who keep rearing their ugly heads
I was once asked if I had done sports in high school. I said, ‘Oh yea, I ran cross country and track. They responded ‘Oh no, I meant real sports.’
I guess by this reckoning the only high school sports that count are, in alphabetical order, baseball, basketball, football, and, recently hockey, and (yeh, yeh) soccer. Similar judgements seem to enter people’s perceptions of us writers.
In the what do you do exchange when people meet, if I say I’m a writer, I often sense an overtone of ‘well you don’t appear to be Stephen King or J.K. Rowling’ (everybody knows them.) ‘You’re not Alice Walker’ (loved the Color Purple). You’re not Dean Kountz’ (Hey, he put out two bestsellers featuring magical Golden Retrievers. How cool is that?)
And not too long ago an email brought me:
Sweet validation!
Extreme irony: Four days after I wrote the above rich-man’s wife’s hobby paragraph I got this email:
“Hi Bookfoxers,
“I recently saw this story about a woman who wrote YA fantasy books.
“She had a pretty decent career:
- “Published 6 novels.
- “Worked with 4 different publishers.
- “Made roughly $5,000 a year from book sales.
“But her husband never introduced her as a writer. Finally, she pestered him about it. She asked why he never introduced her to people as a writer.
“He said: you’re not a real writer because you don’t do it full time. In fact, he added that if he introduced her as a writer, he felt that he would be lying. And then he dropped the ultimate bomb, telling her: it’s only a hobby.”
That story courtesy of John Matthew Fox. (https://thejohnfox.com/. Lots of good stuff there, by the way.)
And that was only my first synchronicity with Mr. Fox, because:.
The anxiety whisperer strikes. Again.
My words in Italics copied from my journal March-31-a few years ago
Breakfast musing while eating my homemade pancakes: I have made considerable progress towards sketching out scenes in my Zoo Crew novel. Feeling pretty good about my writer self.
Then I started reading in the Sunday New York Times about a polymath film director, and then an ad for James Patterson’s newest book, extolling his genius. Then, I heard the anxiety whisperer start up for the zillionth time.
Maybe I should just drive my school bus and stop worrying about doing anything more than living my life as it is. As Harry Chapin once sang, “me, I’m flying in my taxi, taking tips and getting stoned.”
Returning from my journal musing. Don’t get excited. That’s just a song lyric. I never drove a school bus stoned, and I never demanded tips. Although I did get some tips freely given. A third grader once very sincerely told me what I should do if I ever encountered a T-rex in the street.
I was told I should back the bus up fast and not let any kids off. I filed that away as a good piece of wisdom.
Of course, you know, even if there is no chance of encountering a suburban T-rex, there are always going to be snarky people. Like your “bestie” who loves to offer advice like, “I wouldn’t be caught dead going out in public with that cold sore on my lip.”
But then there’s being snarky to yourself. Remember the imposter syndrome I mentioned in Episode One? The syndrome that fills our heads with questions and doubts? The anxiety whisperer loves this one.
Going back to John Michael Fox, whom I quoted above. In the same email where he talked about the writer’s snarky husband, he went on to address self-snarkiness;
“… the worst isn’t when someone else tells you that you’re not a writer.
“No, the worst is when you say that to yourself.
“Because writers are plagued by doubts, and even if you’ve surrounded yourself with encouraging people, it’s easy to become your own worst enemy.
“Negative self-talk creeps in. You start to believe that you can’t write a sentence and that the whole manuscript is rubbish.
“You tell yourself that if you were a real writer, it wouldn’t be this hard.
“And instead of having others disqualify you, you disqualify yourself.”
A week after Mr. Fox’s email even more evidence of the strange and strained mindset we writers inhabit came to my attention in an article with the pessimistic title:
“The better you write, the more you will fail”
The last Sunday New York Times of February 2023 included an essay with that title by Stephen Marche.” Marche noted that even household name writers have stories of misery and challenge.
“A particularly vicious species of irony drove the working life of Herman Melville. His first book was ‘Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life’ — pure crap and a significant best seller. His final book was ‘Billy Budd,’ a masterpiece that he couldn’t even manage to self-publish. His fate was like the sick joke of some cruel god.”
In case you’ve forgotten high school lit, Melville also wrote Moby Dick.
So you see, even for legendary names, writing is not an easy life path to follow. However, bonus alert. You really do get to sit on your butt all day, and that is a perk for me. I’ve only had two types of adult jobs, writing and driving. I excel at sitting.
Back to our self esteem discussion. Don’t be disheartened. There are a lot of philosophies that include some version of the platitude that the most worthwhile things you can do in your life also tend to be the most difficult.
And, anyway, if you have stories to tell you won’t be satisfied until you tell them. No matter who, if anyone, comments on them. And, my goal is to tell my story in a way that hopefully gives you encouragement and ammunition to knock down these barriers.
But beyond being satisfied to simply turn out an occasional piece of writing if you want to be a “writer”, here’s another challenge:
Writer is a vague career path
There isn’t a generally recognized path to a writing career, outside of journalism school and some fine arts degree programs.
To call yourself a doctor, lawyer, accountant, electrician, truck driver, or what have you, you often must meet some defined education or training standards and/or licensing imparted on you from others.
Essentially you can call yourself a writer if you have an idea and the ability to type or hand write to put your idea out there. If others want to pony up money to read your writing then you’re a professional writer.
So, I would say christening someone a writer has to be based mainly on output. I apply this even to people with writing program degrees.
Where does this discussion go from here?
It comes down to who am I?
So, it takes output to call yourself a writer. Every piece of completed writing is built on an idea. The question on many trying to be writers is how do you come up with ideas.
As I noted above, Episode 7 is all about ideas so I’m going to leave that subject hanging for a bit.
Once you have a solid idea, how do you present it so any dummy can see the point you are making? And, perhaps most importantly at what point in the process do you know you are a writer?
Of course, anyone can put words on a screen (or paper, if you’re so inclined), without considering themselves a writer. In my days of creating oil field safety manuals one of the best editors I worked with was not an editor but rather a civil engineer.
He took a logical, engineering-style approach to reviewing documents. He also, had a very good grasp, maybe even better than mine, of the rules of English usage.
But I suspect in the core of his being he was an engineer. Editing was just a necessary evil to put out documents that would help ensure the work of oil production was done correctly and safely.
Engineering, architecture, the building trades and many more occupations are creative venues. I will occasionally relate creating a piece of writing to building a house
And, I’m sure there are unhappy engineers, carpenters, and concrete workers, but I think the winner take all category of career psych issues is:
The brilliant but troubled writer
Shortly after I retired from being a commercial driver’s license examiner, I knew I wanted to revive my writing career and focus on fiction. I figured I had to rebuild my internal I am a writer persona.
But what should this persona be? One idea, kind of tongue in cheek, but perhaps with a little bit of jealousy, was choosing to pursue the persona of the troubled writer whose brilliant stuff is agented, published, and sold by the hundreds of thousands of copies.
The troubled writer whose agent arranges for someone, maybe even a small company, to manage the writer’s vast royalties. The troubled writer who needs a housekeeper, a cook, someone to change a burned-out light bulb.
But, because they are so brilliant and tragic and have the internal drive and the time (remember they’re not hampered by having to unscrew light bulbs.) their fame grows. And, of course, they are talented.
They write relentlessly. Readers stand in line for their stuff. But eventually alcoholism, drugs, or depression kills them. Their death splashes across media. Their sales soar even higher.
So, one plan would be to simply write, attract an agent, and furiously cram writing into the 10 hours a day between hangover control and time to drink again.
But, maybe I could strive to just be a more successful me.
I did toy with another planning retirement thought. On a less tragic writer path, I could write a few hours a day, while keeping an eye on maintaining my newly found freedom from anxiety disorders.
And, knowing that I need to keep busy, I could pass some time by joining my former co-worker Jen and do two or three freelance CDL tests a week.
A hundred something for each couple hour test and getting to ride around in semis and dump trucks, not bad. That would give me spending money and leave me time to write. But then came:
Another aha moment
One night, shortly after retirement, I was struck by the idea that if I really want to be a writer, tragic, joyful, or whatever kind of writer I choose, this is it. Time is running out.
I have to really think I am a writer and not be compromised by always doing something else.
I will make time to write. I will make time around my writing for the other business of living, maintaining relationships, a house, dogs, cats, etc.
I’ve established I don’t have the desire nor personality to be tragically brilliant. Even if I could claim to be brilliant. I’ve worked hard to keep anxiety from controlling my life. I don’t find any glory in being tragic. It’s a miserable existence.
That’s my thoughts. Now for the:
Summary and up next
Being a writer can be one of the coolest things a human can do with their life. But there are any number of barriers to getting to the writerly goal. These include not believing in yourself, others not believing in you, and you not having a clear picture of the kind of writer you want to be.
Before I further explore how to develop a writer persona, let’s take a detour by way of the upcoming Episode 3. Episode 3 expands my personal story of traveling through and out the other side of anxiety disorder. For me, growing as a writer is inseparable from growing as a person in general.
I also hope someone out there is following this and will get something from my story. Perhaps that something will be the simple, but very powerful realization they are not alone. Maybe I am describing having the same twisted thoughts and fears that bother them. Maybe these folk are wondering what has made the difference for me.
And, honestly, in Episode 3, I can’t pass up the opportunity to share the relevant wisdom of the Queen of Poop. That was her self title, not mine.
One more thing before I go away for now:
Writerly giveaway of the day
Pay attention to your surroundings.
This might yield non writer benefits including keeping you from wandering into a convenience store in the middle of a robbery. But being aware can also lead to story ideas and character sketches.
Consider the following I tapped out on my phone while lunching alone in a restaurant at the edge of the Denver University campus.
A customer, a regular, apparently, walks in. “Sit wherever you want, Steve,” someone from the back calls. I can see “Steve” clearly from the side booth I am sitting in.
Next thing I know, with no visible sign of Steve ordering, the older waitress comes up with a tray containing a salad, something that looked like it might be a burrito, a Hillas beer and an empty glass and a large glass of ice water.
Returning to the kitchen, the waitress brings a second bottle of Hillas. The man pours from the first bottle into the smaller beer glass. Then shakes quite a bit of salt into the beer.
Other than occasionally glancing up at the sports talk on the tv mounted on the wall opposite his booth, or to acknowledge the waitress’ visits with a thank you, he is at one with his plate. He metronomically forks bite followed by bite, broken by an occasional brief respite from the beer glass.
Does this not show a man for who lives by routines?
And one more observation, because I’ve saved this one for years waiting for a time to use it:
Walking past two women in the Hill section of Boulder. One bent over, looking in her purse, for car keys probably, as they were along the curb. The one standing said, “I never noticed before, but my nose ring reflects in your orb.”
The wonderful things you encounter when you keep your eyes and ears open!
In Closing
Remember. Avoid avoidance.