Get Humiliated. Get Creative.
In 2017, I was a senior in college studying English and I was a terrible writer.
Examples A-C
A. Stranger Things realizes its legacy
B. Hell or High Water pays off late
C. Westworld redefines fantasy
There were a number of reasons why I was so bad. One reason was that I wanted to make my point, but I never wanted to take the time to show how I got from point A to point B and defend my reasoning.
Not only was I unwilling, but I was unable. Even if I did come up with a nugget of actual insight, I was too arrogant to put in the hours of digging and tilling to determine if there was anything more to the nugget. I simply thought the nugget had enough goodness in it to stand on its own, and putting it down on paper would make me a writer. Predictably, my arrogance led to boring, uninteresting work.
2017 was the year I was a terrible writer, and it was also the year that my girlfriend broke up with me. It was a devastating blow to my heart and my ego. Yet it was that destruction which allowed me to become a better writer.
As the weeks that separated me and the breakup grew, I kept thinking I’d win her over somehow and I continued writing. Looking back, I guess I assumed that I would get something published and whenever she decided to look me up on Google, she’d find that piece, read it, see how smart I was and then want to return to me and my genius.
It’s laughable now–I can’t believe I really thought that, but my heart wanted it so my head figured it was pretty reasonable.
Anyway, I had just watched the second season of Stranger Things and wrote a review of it. I thought it was a pretty interesting piece about revenge and forgiveness and healing (spoiler: it wasn’t).
I sent it to my buddy who wrote for a small film site, and he passed it on to his editor for review. I was sure I’d get some positive feedback. Instead, I got this from the editor:
Needless to say, I was pretty bummed.
I would show you the draft if I still had it, but I was so embarrassed about my creative failure that I deleted every trace of it.
At that point, I think a better writer would have embraced the critique; really tried to discover what worked and how that could be formed into something better. But I didn’t. I gave up and tried to forget about it (yes, my ego was that fragile).
A week or so after that, another friend called me and told me my ex was dating someone else. In fact, it looked like she’d been dating him for a while–pretty soon after she broke up with me. It felt like I was going through the break up all over again. I remember laying on my couch just staring up at the ceiling, trying to scheme a way to get her back. (Overshare? Probably).
Even if I did come up with some plan to win her heart, I kept getting frustrated because I kept running into the reality that I was powerless to influence her.
During this time, a line from Jon Bellion’s, “All Time Low” kept playing over and over in my head.
I, I’ve been trying to fix my pride
But that shit’s broken, that shit’s broken
I was trying to pick myself up and reassemble my pride by telling myself I was better off without her, but phrases like that weren’t enough. The rejection kept smashing any and every semblance of pride and reminding me of my humiliation.
A few more weeks rolled by, I wrote another article and it got published on the same site. It’s not a world-changing accomplishment, but the article was just better. The funny part is, I don’t think my writing skills improved significantly between December and February. I owe the article’s success (it’s really just a success for me) to my humiliation.
What changed?
I realize now that the first draft about Stranger Things was indeed shaky; I had taken my assumptions about what the show should have done and then judged it based on how it succeeded and failed to meet my expectations rather than seeking to understand it on its own terms. It made for a domineering and boisterous argument.
Looking back, I think the humility I gained from fully feeling my smallness and powerlessness changed my mindset from domineering and boisterous to compassionate and quiet which are the two most important traits for becoming an attentive and nuanced writer.
The importance of humility for every artist
Humility is difficult for me, and it’s something I’d prefer to avoid practicing, yet I’ve realized how integral it is for every creative if they want to produce good work.
I was at a live recording for On Being in which Enrique Martinez Celaya said (and I’m paraphrasing), “Art makes you forget yourself.” Art makes artists forget themselves because they’re working to manifest something abstract, and as they do that, they’re reminded of their own smallness.
Thinking of the writer at their desk, interacting with such large ideals and worrying over superfluous details makes them seem grand and nearly divine–far removed from the worries of the world. Yet in a letter to Fitzgerald, Hemingway reveals that writing is one of the most humiliating vocations on the planet.
I [Hemingway] write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket…
Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it — don’t cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist — but don’t think anything is of any importance because it happens to you or anyone belonging to you…You see, Bo, you’re not a tragic character. Neither am I. All we are is writers and what we should do is write.
Hemingway is trying to pull Fitzgerald from his self-pity and motivate him to start writing again, but he doesn’t give him a pep talk, stroke his ego, rebuild him in any way, or tell him that the world needs his writing. He does the opposite.
He admits that he himself mostly writes “shit”, acknowledges that humans are powerless over much of anything (the word “bitched” is such a violating word too), and then advocates that Fitzgerald forget his “personal tragedy” because the universe is indifferent to it. He continually tears Fitzgerald down and actually undervalues their role by saying of all the roles to play, their’s is the lowest. Yet it’s their submission to this reality that made Hemingway and Fitzgerald’s work so meaningful.
I had the same problem as Bellion; I was trying to fix my pride, but whatever method I used was unequal to mend it.
It was a tough spot to be in, but I got out.
The solution?
I stopped trying to fix my pride.
