The First Lie

In last month’s column, I wrote about how the world of the artist is split squarely in two: the necessarily private creative part, and—should you wish to share your work—the unavoidably public part. And while the two parts require the same act of trust to navigate, each also has its own distinct lie that comes packaged in the benign wrapping of a question so insidious in its simplicity that some of us stop hearing it the way we cease to noticing the hum of the refrigerator. So as to give these lies their full due, I will attend to them separately—the first this month, the second next month.

As I said, the lie presents itself as a question, and what seems like a perfectly reasonable one at that: Am I any good? And what’s wrong with that question? Aren’t there Good Writers and Bad Writers? Don’t Good Writers get published and Bad Writers remain unpublished? Everyone, after all, has read writing they call “Good” and writing that they call “Bad”, and everyone wants their writing to be that which is called “Good.” Yes?

No. Because the answer to the question, “Am I any good?” is not, “No” and is not, “Yes”. In fact, there is no answer at all because the question does not actually exist. Not in reality. It exists only in our imaginations, where it is no more real than the Boogie Man.

You are exactly as Good as you must be. You lack nothing. You have everything required to write exactly what it is you want to write. Not what I want to write, or what J. K. Rowling or Toni Morrison wants to write—what you want to write. You have it all. The notion that somehow you were born tragically deficient to do the very thing you most want to do is to me as possible as an oak tree sprouting from a sunflower seed.

If, however, you want to ask a question, let it be this: Does what I have written say what I want it to say? Now that is a useful question. That is a question that will ask you to push your language to help translate what you know to be true as a feeling into what another can understand as an idea. That is a question that might send you to writing classes, writing books, or writing magazines to find clues from those who have gone before you as to how you might make a character sound as mad as you know she is. That, in short, is a question that will help you grow. Am I any good? is a question that kills, because the very question suggests the existence of a “No” you can never disprove.

The real question, Does what I have written say what I want to say, is not always so easy to answer, however. Others might help you find a way to say what you want to say, but in the end only you can decide if you have actually said what you wanted to say. This requires trust in that most insubstantial thing—your own creative impulse. To really answer this question, you must learn to walk without the net of public opinion. This is where courage comes in. But you have that too, if you ask it of yourself.

And once you have concluded that you have said what you wanted to say to the very best of your ability—your work is done. Put down the pencil. Others will say what they want to say about it, they will like it or not, but none of that is your business. And someday you might look back at what you once wrote and feel indifferent toward it, but that is only because you have changed, and because you no longer want to write what you once wrote.

And isn’t that excellent? Isn’t life always The Next Thing? You are not a statue in the market square fixed eternally as this or that, you are a trajectory of desire bound only to that which draws you constantly forward.

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A Friend of the World

Did you know that at the height of his creative powers, at a time when he was writing the music that would most-influence a generation of songwriters, Bob Dylan was booed regularly? True story. The audience was generally unhappy that he had stopped writing acoustic protest songs in favor of more poetic, and now electric, rock & roll. In “Don’t Look Back,” Martin Scorsese’s documentary about that time in Dylan’s career, we see Dylan turn to a friend in a limo ride home from a concert, and, wondering aloud about all the booing, ask, “So why do they keep buying all the tickets?”

And did you know that Johnny Carson loved to sing? You probably didn’t. Yet I heard once—once, mind you—that he had taken lessons for years. I watched a lot of Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show” when I was young, but I can’t remember a single instance of hearing him sing so much as a jingle.

Artists’ lives are divided distinctly in two. The first half is about the artist and their work. This is a solitary pursuit, and is meant, for the most part, to be so. At some point, the artist must ask themselves what it is they and they alone wish to see, hear, read, feel, and then endeavor to render it. The solitary nature of work is a part of the gift not only to the artist—to hear themselves more clearly—but also, should they choose to share, to the rest of the world as well, for only then does the audience receive the gift of that unique voice.

The operative word here, however, is choose, for no one is actually required to share what they make. Dylan chose to sing his songs live—he could have followed The Beatles and retreated to the studio—and so accepted the terms as they came: to be booed and cheered in equal parts. Johnny Carson, no stranger to the vagaries of an audience’s taste (as perhaps only a stand up comic must become), opted not to share his singing voice with the public, unlike, say, another ‘70s talk show icon, Merv Griffin.

For the writer, of course, the second half of your creative life is publication, or the pursuit of it. There is no shortage of articles to be found, many in this very magazine, about how best to go about this, and there is always advice aplenty about ignoring rejection, and toughening your skin, and believing in yourself—all of which is worthy and true.

But it is important to remember that, in the end, what is required to publish a book is exactly what is required to write it. You do not get to know, at the moment you decide to write a book, what it will actually look like when it is done. This you must discover, chapter by chapter, scene by scene, word by word. In fact, particularly if you have never written one before, you probably aren’t even sure if the book will ever be finished. All you can do is trust that you will follow what most interests you, to the best of your ability, and that what results is your very best effort possible at that time.

This is also true of sharing your work with the public. You do not get to control who will like or dislike that book anymore than Bob Dylan could control who booed and who cheered. All you can do is trust—but trust everyone, every last person, to do what is absolutely best for them. For if you do, then you will allow the book, in its own course, to find its way to the people for whom it had been written, the people who had been asking for it in their own quiet fashion. In this way, through seeking publication you can make a friend of the world, rather than merely a series of connections to be made or walls to be climbed or doors to be squeezed past. The world is always delighted when you allow it be itself, and, in my experience, is always happy to return the favor.