Allowing Yourself to Suck

I’m writing a lot more than I used to these days, which is a good thing for a variety of reasons. For one thing, I’m getting a lot of practice under my belt, and for another it’s training me to look at storytelling from a more critical, ‘insider’s’ perspective. While enjoying something on an emotional level, I can also take it apart piece by piece, figure out what works and what didn’t, compare and contrast how I would have done something with how it was ultimately presented and learn that way. Learning to write and learning to read like a writer are very interconnected concepts, and it’s rather exciting to feel like I’m getting my legs with what’s essentially a new language.

One of the not so great things about writing more often is facing down the fact that I’m simply not very good at it yet. Most of the time my characterization is poor, my dialogue and description isn’t very efficient, and I’m not yet practiced at juggling a bunch of eggs in a scene. Paragraphs will run from description to internal monologue to action without very smooth transitions, so scenes feel jarring and a bit schizophrenic. It’s a lot harder than it looks to switch gears from function to function in a single scene, so it makes me respect the fact that people can have a scene do multiple things (introducing characters, establishing motivation, reinforcing themes and moods) so effortlessly.

It can be a little disheartening when you share company with people who are so good. I’m lucky enough to be married to a very good writer, and I’ve known quite a few people who seem to have a natural talent for it. Back in Arkansas, so many people just have this innate understanding of how to tell a story, and they make it seem like the easiest thing in the world. I’m not sure if that ability was ingrained in them or what, but now that I’m trying to blaze their trail on my own I see that I have a lot of catching up to do.

And that’s a really difficult thing to accept: the fact that compared to a lot of your peers, you suck. No one wants to have one of their worst fears realized -- that they’re just not very good at something they desperately want to do. It’s a pretty strong blow to your pride and it makes you just want to give up. I know there’s a lot of times where I just want to throw in the towel, to say that it might be better if I just gave up the illusion of being a writer. No matter how good I get, I’ll never be good enough. I’ll never be like *them*.

There are multiple ways out of this trap, but here’s the idea that worked for me. It’s the idea of impermanence. No matter what state you’re in, no matter how firmly entrenched you think you are, every state is passing. I suck now, that’s a fact. But if I keep working at it, if I keep paying attention to my mistakes and working to correct them, then I’ll get better. Eventually, I’ll suck a little less. And a little less still. And then I’ll be OK. One day, if I work hard enough, I might even be pretty good. All it requires is dedication and patience, and the belief that the current state of sucky affairs will not last.

So right now I’m working on three different short stories that aren’t very good. One I’ll likely edit and post online, another I’ll submit to a zine I somehow got let into, and another I’ll try to submit for ‘legitimate’ publication -- though it might not be up to snuff until next year. Sure, none of these stories might not be the best on the web, or in this particular zine issue, or in that anthology, but I’ll have worked hard on them. And I can use the experience to put a little distance between myself and my current suckiness.

This tack might not work for everyone, of course. Sometimes it doesn’t help to have a kind of mantra when you’re feeling down on yourself. “I suck right now, but I will still do the best I can. Later, I won’t be quite so bad -- as long as I work hard now.” Maybe it’s not productive to think, “I suck at writing, so what? I’ll do it anyway.”

Does anyone else have suggestions? What do you tell yourself to push through a time of self-doubt?

National Poetry Month Aftermath

Most years after I write a collection of thirty poems for National Poetry Month, I shut them away in a drawer and I never think of them again. This is pretty unfortunate -- not because you guys will never get to see such great work again or anything, but because I'm effectively robbing myself of much of the creative process. The raw material has been formed, and now it's just waiting for a delicate hand to shape it into something distinct and beautiful.

I won't lie to you, most of the poems I write in the month of April are just stinkers. They're half-formed ideas that I just threw up to meet the deadline, without much thought or car put into them. But who knows, maybe there's a seed in some of those that's been fertilized by all of the crap. And beyond that, there are actual poems that I really liked and, with nurturing, might even be worth submitting to a place or two later on down the road.

Writing poetry -- or anything at all -- isn't really worth the effort it takes if you're not going to see the process through. I have over a hundred poems written over the past four or five years that I've thrown up in various journals and subsequently forgotten about. It's time to dust them off, see what's worth pursuing, and see the projects through to their bitter end.

I still need a little bit of space from this most recent batch of poetry, so starting in June I'll look through the poems I wrote for last year's National Poetry Month and grab the twelve I like most. From there, I'll edit one a week, submit them to peer review, and eventually, start looking for places that might want to publish them. Hopefully by year's end there'll be at least one poem that's been published somewhere. Either online or in print. I'm not picky!

Another thing I've come to realize is that I have little patience for reading poetry. There are a number of factors for this -- a lot of poems written by people who are just starting out use words that are archaic and impressive-sounding for false inflation of their ideas. That is, they're making relative mundane statements and observations, but using lofty language to try and mask the fact. I don't know if it's my age or experience, but it's easy to see through and just immediately makes me want to bail on the work with no further effort.

By contrast, you have poetry from a lot of the 'establishment' that feels impenetrable without a Master's degree in the humanities. That's equally discouraging; I've got nothing against work that makes you think or something you can enjoy on multiple levels, and in fact the work of taking a poem apart is pretty rewarding. But I think too many people make poetry so dense there's no entry into it without specialized knowledge. It's difficult to be a 'casual' poetry fan.

Maybe I'm just reading all of the wrong people, but the result of this is that I'm just not reading poetry at all. And I think that's resulted in a degradation of my work. The areas of the brain that decipher metaphor and other poetic tricks are the same ones in play when you create poetry. And thinking of poetry as a realm of expression for people only interested in emotionally disconnect word-logic puzzles or emo kids with little to say makes your own work suffer. It's absolutely not true, but it's a hard stereotype to shake. When a part-time poet feels that way about his craft, you know the medium is in trouble.

So, what to do? The obvious answer is to read more poetry, put up with the chaff to get to the good stuff. I could brush off my old favorites -- Billy Collins, Tony Hoagland, Charles Rafferty -- to remind me that it's possible for poetry to be emotionally rich and complex, yet accessible. Or I could ask the three friends I know who like poetry who they recommend. But maybe I could encourage a bit of discussion here.

So, what do you guys think? What poets would you recommend to reawaken interest in a disillusioned reader? Have any of you ever experienced poetry burn-out before? What did you do to get out of it?