I love paying attention to how other creative people operate, especially those who have created things I admire. Maile and I had the great fortune of going to see Natalie Merchant perform a year or two ago, and it’s my favorite concert I’ve ever been to.
Here’s how she answered the question, How did becoming a parent change your songwriting process? Did that make it easier or harder?
My technique was completely altered by motherhood. I don’t have huge expanses of creative time like I used to have. I would put myself in a self-induced trance for days, and it was blissful — just alpha waves humming. It was great. Now I feel like I have to make appointments with my muse to meet at 3 a.m. So much of this new record was written during stolen moments in the middle of the night, whenever I could get away. During the day, when I’m doing laundry or making dinner, I’m not humming melodies or writing down lines. I have to sit and focus on the process, but finding the time to do it is so difficult. I blew so much time before I became a mother. I could have written novels, with all the time I used to have. When I talk to friends who have creative lives and children, we commiserate about all the time we wasted in our youth. Now time is the most precious thing in my life.
To read her entire interview over at Salon, click HERE.
Anne Lamott’s words on her Facebook page so completely resonated with me, especially after my post earlier today about my greatest fear. Here’s a small part of what she wrote:
It’s time to get serious about joy and fulfillment, work on our books, songs, dances, gardens. But perfectionism is always lurking nearby, like the demonic prowling lion in the Old Testament, waiting to pounce. It will convince you that your work-in-progress is not great, and that you may never get published. (Wait, forget the prowling satanic lion–your parents, living or dead, almost just as loudly either way, and your aunt Beth, and your passive-aggressive friends, whom we all think you should ditch, are going to ask, “Oh, you’re writing again? That’s nice. Do you have an agent?”)
Oh my God, what if you wake up some day, and you’re 65, or 75, and you never got your memoir or novel written; or you didn’t go swimming in warm pools and oceans all those years because your thighs were jiggly and you had a nice big comfortable tummy; or you were just so strung out on perfectionism and people-pleasing that you forgot to have a big juicy creative life, of imagination and radical silliness and staring off into space like when you were a kid? It’s going to break your heart. Don’t let this happen.
I think it’s time for me to get over a major fear.
Fear is a peculiar thing – it gives you, among other things, huge blind spots. It closes off entire areas of life. Once you allow fear to send you on a detour, it’s easy to forget about the area fear led you away from. Soon, if fear is allowed to complete its work, you won’t even remember the thing you’re afraid of – you’ll just sort of naturally navigate in the opposite direction.
In the last few months I stumbled upon an old fear of mine: I am afraid of letting people read my fiction.
* * * * *
I went to Turkey sixteen months ago to write about a man who was dying of liver and colon cancer. When I landed in that country, we knew that without a miracle he would die very soon. I met with him for three weeks in January, wrote his book in February and March, and the book released in July, the same month that he passed away.
In April, after I finished writing his story, I found myself thinking a lot about my own mortality. After spending three weeks chatting almost every day with a dying man (he was only 50 years old), I was struggling with the idea of my own death. I didn’t want to die. I was desperate to avoid it.
One of those April nights, as we all sat around the dinner table, my children asked if I would write a book for them. I had always wanted to write a children’s book, but one that also appealed to adults, so we sat there at the dinner table and brainstormed ideas for the story. Long after the food had grown cold, I grilled them with questions, and they gave me ideas.
Then I spent April and May and part of June writing this novel about a boy who loses his mother but refuses to accept it. It is a fantastical story about an old woman and two opposing forces and the Tree of Life.
The funny thing was, I didn’t realize at the time that I was writing out my own struggle with death. To me, it was simply a story. But when I finished, and I stepped back, I realized so much of what I had been wrestling with was there, in the pages.
I spent a few weeks reading the book to my children, sitting in our white chair as they crowded at my feet. I promised them I would self-publish it for them to read.
Then I closed the doc on my computer, and it’s been sitting in my Scrivener file for about a year.
* * * * *
I’ve had more writing work in the last year than I’ve ever had in the last five years. I’ve been blessed to be part of some incredible stories.
But I also know that I’ve been hiding behind this busy-ness. I use the books I write for other people to avoid rejection. In some ways, I hide behind those stories.
Then the other day, Cade asked me a question.
“Dad, when are you going to publish that story you wrote for us? You promised, you know.”
I promised him I would have it in book form by Christmas.
* * * * *
So there you go. By Christmas, this book of fiction will be in print (you can hear me talk about this a little bit on Bryan Allain’s podcast, The Schnoz Cast). I’ve got someone reading through it now, someone who will hopefully help me shape it a little better. I might do a Kickstarter campaign in the fall to help cover some of the costs and gather a small tribe behind the launch, so keep your eyes open for that. I figure if I can sell 100 copies in advance, I should be able to cover design and editing costs.
I guess the most freeing part of it is no longer caring if it’s any good or not. I mean, that’s not entirely true, I’ll still care, but at some point I think you have to move forward, no matter the consequences, no matter how rough the finished product still feels. At some point you have to say, “This is what I have to offer, this is the best that I can do, so you can take it or leave it.”
I guess for now the only other thing I have to say is, “Stay tuned.”
This photo of me, my aunt, and my mom is from the summer of 2012.
The first of fourteen people went under the water and then came up. New life, with water rushing off of them. We clapped, and I felt the beginnings of tears form in the corners of my eyes because I knew that person, I knew where they had come from, I knew the changed direction of their life. I put my arm around my 9-year-old daughter. It was almost her turn to be baptized.
She poked my shoulder with one of her long, narrow fingers. I see it in her hands, you know, the passing of time, her getting older. I see it in the way she walks, the way her feet have grown. She poked me again. I leaned towards her so that she could whisper into my ear.
“How long do they hold you under the water?” she asked, and I could see the anxiety in her eyes. We never know how to approach this kind of dying. We never know what it holds for us.
“Only twenty minutes or so,” I said in a serious voice.
“Dad!” she said, smiling.
“It’s only for a moment,” I reassured her, kissing her cheek. “They’ll only hold you under for a moment.”
* * * * *
“Waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists,” Sarah Palin said, and there are so many things wrong with that sentence that I don’t even know where to begin. I think of my daughter’s baptism, beautiful and pure. I think of torture, holding someone under the water until they believe they are drowning, until they truly think you are killing them.
I think that Sarah Palin and I have a very different understanding of baptism, of the beauty involved in that symbolic death, of what it means to come up again, to open your eyes. I think we have a very different understanding of freedom.
There is so much trust inherent in the act of baptism. It’s not just a proclamation of faith – it’s our expressing a willingness to die, to go under with Christ. It’s a physical sign of our trust that he will only hold us under for a moment.
Only a moment, and then we rise.
* * * * *
I got one of those texts you never want to get, the kind of text about a beautiful, wonderful aunt who underwent treatment for cancer, what, a year ago? Not even? Time is irrelevant when it comes to cancer. Time stretches and shortens. When you’re given years to live, how long are those years? How short? I don’t know. I don’t think those years have the same value as other years. I think they are like eras. Epochs. Each is a millennium.
Or a moment. Less than a second. The time it takes to kiss my daughter’s cheek.
The text started out with the words, “I really don’t feel like talking about this but I wouldn’t want you to hear it from anyone else.” The text involved more lousy phrases, things like “they found more cancer.” Later the beautiful aunt herself wrote a post on Facebook with more gut-wrenching phrases, things like “the fluid is positive for breast cancer cells,” and “stage four.”
I can barely keep it together while I type.
I sent a text telling this beautiful person how sad I was, and she called me right away because of course she would. She insisted it wasn’t time to be sad.
“After all, there is a wedding,” she said, in reference to my sister’s wedding next weekend. “We cannot be sad at your sister’s wedding. We will not be sad.”
“I know. I know,” I said reluctantly.
“When you tell your children about this,” she said, slowly, thoughtfully, “please don’t tell them I’m dying of cancer. Tell them I’m learning how to live with cancer.”
It is an act of trust, this kind of living. It is the baptism by fire that Jesus promised us.
I feel like a child waiting for my turn. I feel so young, so fragile, and I lean over and poke him and ask, How long will you hold us under, Lord?
And somehow I know, in the way that you really, really know something, that it’s just for a moment. How it will feel to come up out of this murky water! How it will feel, when that death runs off of us!
Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I found. I found it is the small things, everyday deeds, ordinary folk, that keeps the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love. (The Hobbit)
Friends of ours, selling everything and moving to Haiti to serve the people there. We celebrated their adventure yesterday with good music and good food. The children ran around outside, then came in and looked at the silent auction items, asked what it was all about. Theirs is not a simple act, but one full of kindness and love.
The guy at the toll booth who smiled and wished us a good day.
Whoever it was who mailed us a banker’s check two years ago when I had no work. $1,000. Enough to help us get our feet back under us.
You do not have to have a large platform in order to change the world. You do not have to have a blog read by thousands or a book that’s on the New York Times Best Seller list. You don’t have to pastor a huge church or run a massive business.
You, an ordinary folk, can keep the darkness at bay.
Every single day we are putting things out into the world, molding and crafting creations, only to have them rejected or (worse?) ignored. If writers’ books and articles and blog posts are like children, then we are the parents pushing the stroller through a group of strangers who walk up, look inside, shrug their shoulders, and then say, “Meh.”
I saw this rejection letter on a friend’s Facebook page recently:
Dear Mr. Hewson,
Thanks for submitting your tape of ‘U2’ to RSO. We have listened with careful consideration but feel it is not for us at present. We wish you luck with your future career.
Yours Sincerely
Alexander Sinclair
For those of you who didn’t know, Bono’s real name is Paul David Hewson.
Rejection.
I actually love rejection stories, because there’s something about rejection that propels us forward. The letters pile up (“Thanks, but no thanks”) and the negative comments pour in, yet what does the writer do?
(After sobbing or pacing angrily or downing a quart of ice cream while mumbling some of the more despicable Psalms as curses against those who did not recognize her genious.)
The writer returns to the page.
I want to collect guest posts from all of you writers out there. I want to hear of your recent rejection (or perhaps one from long ago that still sticks like a burr in your saddle). I want to hear about what you did next.
So go ahead, submitt your guest posts to me for consideration at shawnsmucker(at)yahoo(dot)com. Your story of rising above rejection might be the one thing another writer needs to read.
***After thinking about this a bit more, I think it would be good to have stories of various kinds of rejection we’ve experienced and pushed through (not just writing related), so keep that in mind. All rejects are welcome.
