The creative process can be a real rollercoaster! On the good days, it’s easy to be positive about your work. But on the bad days, it’s just as easy to let self-doubt creep in.
I wrote these letters to remind myself of some important truths about writing. My hope is that they can help other writers too.
Dear Bad-Day Stephanie,
Stop it. Stop. I KNOW what you’re worried about, and it’s dumb. You’re worried that you’ll die and never have written anything good. That no one is going to give a flying corn cob about your work. No one is going to remember you, and you’re going to become dust—No. Worse than dust—molecular garbage. And you know what?
You might be right.
You will die someday, and your writing might die too. In fact, that’s what happens to most creative people. Think of all the writers, artists, musicians, etc. that have ever lived—do you know all of them? NO! You had no idea that these people were even a part of the world until they became part of your world. It’s the same for everyone else. That poet who dominates your mental landscape with their perfect blend of humor and emotional depth? To someone else, they’re just a random stranger.
I know you long to have the courage and resolve of Ray Bradbury, who simply decided he would never die, and so now here we are, still reading his work. You try to follow his example, to speak that kind of immortality into existence, but it’s hard. In reality, no one has that kind of confidence 24/7. (Not even Ray Bradbury, I’m willing to bet.)
Let’s contrast that with another writer. Remember that John Keats poem you read in grad school that totally knocked you out? Well, it’s time to revisit it. Here you go:
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be by John Keats When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain Before high-pilèd books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starred face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love—then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
In this poem John Keats captures a lot of the same fears you have. He expresses his anxieties about his creative abilities, time, fame, and death. It’s jarring to see these anxieties represented in the work of a poet who looms large in the literary canon.
John Keats died of tuberculosis in 1821 at the age of 25. During his short life he published only three books of poetry (and they weren’t hefty volumes either). At the time of his death the combined sales of these books amounted to about 200 copies. In all likelihood, he died thinking he was a literary failure. Yet today, he is considered a poetic genius. Does John Keats know how good it turned out? That people all over the world now love and respect his poetry?…Hard to say. No one really knows what goes on behind the veil.
Don’t force yourself to live up to the posthumous success of dead authors. Just live up to your own expectations. Oh. And just a tip? That only works if you don’t set your personal expectations too high. So, you might want to lower the bar a bit…
A little more.
Just a bit more.
Just, like, maybe—
Okay. Better.
There. See? Not so terrible.
I’ve told you this before and it remains true: at the end of this long road, you may be published, or maybe not. If nothing ever becomes of your work all you’re going to have is the work itself, and the satisfaction of having created it. That has to be what fulfills you—the fact that you did it! You wrote. You LIVED. It doesn’t matter if no one else in the world saw you do the thing. You still did it. That doesn’t change.
Why is someone else’s dumb book famous and beloved instead of your dumb book? Because Fame is arbitrary. Let that be freeing instead of stifling.
Seriously, you dummy, stop being so weird and existential. You’re making yourself sad. Plus…people are starting to stare.
For what it’s worth, dead or alive, you’re still my favorite writer.
