Feeling like a Fraud
April 4th, 2007
Facing down a block.
I’ve signed up for the Art and Soul retreat in Portland in October, either encouraged or egged on by my best friend, and I waver between pinch-me excitement and anxiety that I’ll be in a room full of real artists and be seen as some sort of poseur, dreadful paralyzing fear of having nothing to say. Which has me wondering about the idea of “writer’s block” which implies something there, stopping stuff from coming out, stuff that is also there, which is not the same as the terrifying blankness, the search for anything more meaningful to say than that I get frustrated with routine sameness of emptying the dishwasher and emptying the dishwasher and pick-up after pick-up from school and, a life measured out in laundry scoops…
Somebody tonight asked if I wrote and I froze, no real answer — I am faithful with morning pages, much more than with my blog, but is that writing, or being too cheap for a therapist? And I wrestle with perfectionism that keeps me from wanting to publish a blog entry until I’ve written and re-read and erased a chunk and re-written, a few times. Which doesn’t make for prolific blog writing. And so if I say I write I feel like a fraud, but I cannot say I don’t. And I occasionally find an idea to mine or a turn of words that please me, and it’s hard to simply let it languish in pages that I can never bring myself to sift through again?
Anyway, blocked is sometimes being critical of the thoughts that come and sometimes it’s fear of not being good enough, fear of being found out as a fraud, I am not solipsistic enough to be believe that I am the only person to feel this, but sometimes it is blankness, wanting to curl up in front of the television and eat ice cream and be numb until the next load of laundry needs to be folded… But I do keep going with the morning pages, even when everything I write seems to be complete drivel. I am so grateful for the blogs I read which remind me that other people are out there struggling their own struggles and attempting to do more than watch tv and eat ice cream.
May 18th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
You’re a writer!!! Just look at your lovely insights.
love
e
June 28th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
“Even the most celebrated writers are plagued by self-doubt and suffer enormous bouts of failure of confidence….Often the best writers are mortified by their work and fear that it’s only a matter of time before others see through them. (_Will this be the day when everyone finds out I can’t write?_ the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet thinks to himself as he mounts the stage to collect his prize.) For every Mailer or Whitman writing his own ad copy, there are countless writers who can barely look themselves in the eye.” (Betsy Lerner, _The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers_, which I HIGHLY recommend! :o)