I’m going to change tack today. Sort of. Thinking about making things – including stories – and the relationship between the process of making, the end result, and assessment of that result. I’ve been quite careful with the words in that sentence. I deliberately used ‘making’ instead of ‘creating’, and deleted ‘judgement’ to replace it with ‘assessment’. Even ‘end result’, which feels much more neutral than ‘product’ or ‘artwork’. Because there is a minefield here, in the language.
Yesterday I spent some time listening to (I don’t bother trying to watch things on my phone when it’s the words that are significant) assorted TED talks sent to me by a friend who tries to encourage me. The first one was by Alain de Bouton, about redefining ‘success’, which personally I didn’t think said anything new, though he is quite entertaining (I could see why my friend sent it, but to me it says she’s just missed the point of who I am). Then there were talks about ‘creativity’, including one by a writer of an extremely successful book about the capriciousness of inspiration, how can you ever know how anything you make will turn out, and, if you’ve hit the spot once, how can you ever be sure you can do it again?
This friend is always sending me stuff like this. She thinks I’m ‘creative’, but I’m never comfortable with that word. It sounds much too pretentious – like calling yourself an ‘artist’ or a ‘writer’. Every time I tell someone I’m a ‘writer’ I cringe inside, wondering where the conversation is going to go next – the same way I do when I tell people I have a PhD. ‘Poet’ is easier, because then they tend to be less impressed; they jump straight to the idea that I’m either a crackpot or a charlatan, and they either laugh it off or give me a wide berth (or both).
And now… I have ground to a halt. I am in front of the computer with tears rolling down my face. I have, unexpectedly, cracked through the armour and reached the soft place of grief, where I might say to the therapist ‘I suppose it’s a bit sad really’ and she says ‘It’s tragic’, and I take on board the pretentious, egotistical, over the top melodrama of the word and nod my head, speechless because I can’t talk through the pain. THAT is what I mean by ‘failure’. My inability to love, defend, stand up for the things I make.
I can’t write any more today. I give up.