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to be sure to be sure
May. 18th, 2011 01:01 amI feel distinctly unhappy and unfulfilled because I'm not making anything, and I haven't for years. Not everyone has to make things, and I'm not inescapably destined to be creative- but I want to, dammit. It's a way to make meaning, making stories. Specifically I'd like to be creating novels, because novels are the art form I've lived in all my life - I should know where to go with a novel, I should know what's missing, what's me.
I don't, though, not consciously. I think to myself, you ought to be sure of what you're doing because you're old (... in my head I am, yes), because you've read so many thousands of books and millions of words. And I think to myself, you ought to be sure because you have to be sure, to get anywhere or do anything. If you don't settle on anything, false-heart, then you won't commit wrongly, you won't waste your time to the wrong purpose (you'll just waste it without any purpose at all).
Laying the puzzle pieces down on the table, it looks like I've been trying to make an entire picture out of a small closed loop of pieces. I'm not sure they even belong in this puzzle at all. I've been very definite about needing to be definite, and I've been very firm about being right. But I'm getting the hazy, unconvinced idea that I don't need to be sure to make a start, or make ten starts, ten steps into unpredictable spaces. The feeling I get when I wake from a dream and want to continue reading it, I want to summon that into waking life; I want a world in my head, a world that is my own and of my rules. I love reading other people's worlds, but I think I also rely on them because I get antsy when my mind's left to roam its own forests. And I know more readers are needed than writers (not that there's a strict divide between the two, but it's easier to be a reader), but I feel like a parasite. I suck in words, I consume experiences, I eat worlds. I beg myself to exhale.
On twitter just now, I said "my main creative block is being too concerned about being wrong to have any ideas, much less pursue them". How do I make myself be wrong more? Around the right friends, I can relax and spill forth ideas, into ears and the air, but around myself, I get rigid, I refuse to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. I lie down, I alt-tab. Resist, resist. Judge myself. I keep saying to myself and sometimes to friends: I'm going to get play dough and make my ideas concrete, set in malleable clay, so I can manipulate them some way that doesn't require precision of words. I still haven't /got/ the clay, I keep putting it off in case the plasticine I get smells bad. Sometimes plasticine does smell bad! ... you're a grown woman, buy more.
(I used to create stories with plasticine all the time as a girl, running over years and taking up metres of space. Horses and riders as the protagonists (mostly horses). I read a lot of pony books. My sister hated that my strict characterisation of the horses ("real horses don't /do/ that, you can't make her do that!"). I didn't let her play freely and I didn't allow her to use the best plasticine. Bossy child I was.)
Plasticine's one avenue of getting the ideas out. I used also tell stories with stones, just moving them around made it easier to tell myself the stories. The main thing is doing something physical, an active spell to summon my ideas and give them life. Okay, journal, I'm going to stop making excuses and try this. The Queen's visit is filling up town at the moment so I might not be able to get in tomorrow, but by Saturday evening I'll have my plasticine and I'll have it out of its pack too. I will report back.
(These entries where I'm writing down my leaps of thought as they come clear may make for odd reading. I just looked over this entry, and the beginning, especially, is a layer of frost on a whalean iceberg.)
I don't, though, not consciously. I think to myself, you ought to be sure of what you're doing because you're old (... in my head I am, yes), because you've read so many thousands of books and millions of words. And I think to myself, you ought to be sure because you have to be sure, to get anywhere or do anything. If you don't settle on anything, false-heart, then you won't commit wrongly, you won't waste your time to the wrong purpose (you'll just waste it without any purpose at all).
Laying the puzzle pieces down on the table, it looks like I've been trying to make an entire picture out of a small closed loop of pieces. I'm not sure they even belong in this puzzle at all. I've been very definite about needing to be definite, and I've been very firm about being right. But I'm getting the hazy, unconvinced idea that I don't need to be sure to make a start, or make ten starts, ten steps into unpredictable spaces. The feeling I get when I wake from a dream and want to continue reading it, I want to summon that into waking life; I want a world in my head, a world that is my own and of my rules. I love reading other people's worlds, but I think I also rely on them because I get antsy when my mind's left to roam its own forests. And I know more readers are needed than writers (not that there's a strict divide between the two, but it's easier to be a reader), but I feel like a parasite. I suck in words, I consume experiences, I eat worlds. I beg myself to exhale.
On twitter just now, I said "my main creative block is being too concerned about being wrong to have any ideas, much less pursue them". How do I make myself be wrong more? Around the right friends, I can relax and spill forth ideas, into ears and the air, but around myself, I get rigid, I refuse to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. I lie down, I alt-tab. Resist, resist. Judge myself. I keep saying to myself and sometimes to friends: I'm going to get play dough and make my ideas concrete, set in malleable clay, so I can manipulate them some way that doesn't require precision of words. I still haven't /got/ the clay, I keep putting it off in case the plasticine I get smells bad. Sometimes plasticine does smell bad! ... you're a grown woman, buy more.
(I used to create stories with plasticine all the time as a girl, running over years and taking up metres of space. Horses and riders as the protagonists (mostly horses). I read a lot of pony books. My sister hated that my strict characterisation of the horses ("real horses don't /do/ that, you can't make her do that!"). I didn't let her play freely and I didn't allow her to use the best plasticine. Bossy child I was.)
Plasticine's one avenue of getting the ideas out. I used also tell stories with stones, just moving them around made it easier to tell myself the stories. The main thing is doing something physical, an active spell to summon my ideas and give them life. Okay, journal, I'm going to stop making excuses and try this. The Queen's visit is filling up town at the moment so I might not be able to get in tomorrow, but by Saturday evening I'll have my plasticine and I'll have it out of its pack too. I will report back.
(These entries where I'm writing down my leaps of thought as they come clear may make for odd reading. I just looked over this entry, and the beginning, especially, is a layer of frost on a whalean iceberg.)
