Dear readers! Last time I wrote to you all, in March, I announced my intention of “not being uptight” as my long-simmering (long-suffering?) book project finally reached its conclusion and I started to think about what comes next, in work and life.

I love not being uptight and I aspire for that

Mason Currey

·

Mar 24

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But—wouldn’t you know it?—what actually came next was a much-shorter-than-expected turnaround time for the book’s edits and endnotes, with the result that I leapt straight into a new phase of extreme deadline panic, perhaps the most extreme such phase of this entire project, which is why I haven’t managed to send a new issue of this newsletter in several weeks. (My apologies! The usual fortnightly schedule resumes today, for real.) By the end, my attempt at not-uptightness looked more like a panel in Walter Scott’s Wendy series depicting one of its artist heroine’s periodic meltdowns:

I’ve written before about the creative cycle; this is mine. I aspire to be confident, relaxed, on an even keel—but writing, for me, seems to demand an uneven keel. A genuine question: Is it possible to feel confident and relaxed while writing? I can’t even really conceive of it. I can’t even sit up straight and write; I have to be in a defensive crouch, or slouch, or, even better, lying down, Truman Capote–style.

What is this about? I often think of something that the New Yorker critic Parul Sehgal said in a 2022 interview, talking about her own writing process:

The first draft happens in a sort of last-minute frenzy. I wish that weren’t the case but have more or less surrendered to my grim “process.” (Is there something about writing with great speed, shame, and urgency that overcomes certain defenses?)

Almost everything I write is done with great speed and shame, not so much to overcome certain defenses as to try to outrun them, momentarily. And what am I trying to outrun? Mainly, the inner voice that says, at the exact same instant that I write anything, that what I’m writing is shoddy, inadequate, unoriginal, and above all embarrassing, oh so embarrassing, no, really, wait, stop, why are you doing this, please, stop, stop, stop—

And the only pleasure in writing comes from, very occasionally, silencing that voice with one perfect line or one sudden genuine insight. (That does feel good.) But, usually, the voice is right there alongside me the whole time, and I think that accounts for a lot of the more extreme measures that writing seems to require, at least for me: the getting up absurdly early (because the inner critic is still groggy and not so assertive); the relentless re-creation of the same inevitable deadline panic (because the adrenaline helps me outrun the voice a little faster); the volumes of coffee and, occasionally, other stimulants (for the same reason—the speed and bliss of outrunning the voice for a few hours); and the slouching and writing-while-reclining and all the other various writing rituals (for the comfort and the sense of control).

I can imagine some readers thinking, well, maybe you need to work on all that—maybe you need to learn to bring a more centered, less conflicted self to the task of writing. And maybe that’s true. (Certainly I want to bring a more centered, less conflicted self to a lot of other parts of my life.) But isn’t all the inner doubt and second-guessing also part of the engine of good writing? I know that I can only ever seem to figure out what I want to say by saying it wrong over and over and over, until I finally feel so frustrated that I want to hurl the keyboard across the room—except it’s at the moment just before hurling the keyboard that the right word or phrase or description finally leaps to mind.

It’s exasperating—but if I have had any real growth as a writer, it may be in the fact that I’m coming to . . . sort of enjoy that exasperation? To savor it even, and to miss it when I take a few days off. It’s like Hayao Miyazaki says in the great NHK documentary about his filmmaking process, which seems like a good place to wrap up today:

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CAVEATS, NOTES, ANNOUNCEMENTS

• I wrote the above and then immediately thought, hmm, do I really hear a critical inner voice? It’s a convenient metaphor, but if I’m being honest that’s not exactly what I experience while writing; what I experience is more of a feeling, or a whole jumble of feelings, which I could try to unpack in a future issue if anyone is interested!

• Speaking of future issues: Going forward, I’ve decided to shift the newsletter schedule from every-other-Monday to every-other-Tuesday—because sending the newsletter first thing on Monday inevitably meant that I spent at least half the day Sunday working on it and/or worrying over it, and now with the book done I’d like to try to reclaim my full weekends, ooh la la.

• Another way to silence the inner critic (if that’s even what it is): To see a group of your fellow writers and artists showing up for their work alongside you every morning, which always defuses the angst and makes it feel like a privilege and a pleasure to be participating in this silly, important work of trying to do justice to our creative impulses, whatever they may be. Join us on Worm Zoom anytime.

• Finally: On Wednesday, May 14th, from 1–3pm Pacific time, I’ll be joining the writer

  Helen Sword
  on Zoom for a conversation about writing rituals and related topics (for the first hour) and then trying out some writing exercises on the audience (in the second hour—for paying subscribers only). It should be a fun and extremely not-uptight event; find all the details and register here.

Thanks for reading! This newsletter comes out every other Monday Tuesday—and you can help keep it coming by upgrading to a paid subscription, buying one of my Daily Rituals books, forwarding this email to a friend, or even just clicking the “like” button below.