shut up and make stuff, part II

Everyone needs to immediately run out and find this essay, graphic essay, whatever you want to call it by Lynda Barry. Why? Because she captures here in the most essential straightforward way the ridiculous cycle of fear and judgement most artists find themselves in, or maybe I'm projecting. One particular part of this work resinates for me, when a little figment of her imagination is leaning over her shoulder watching her draw and it says, "oooh that's good ... uh, you wrecked it." That is my biggest fear, I make something that is almost good, almost done, almost an expression of my true potential but I stop short, terrified that in adding to it I will wreck it. And so I have spent many years being "promising" but not achieving. So what do you do? How does Ms. Barry suggest I, all of us, escape this horrible trap? Shut up and make stuff. Enjoy the god damn process, stop thinking about it needing to become anything.  Stop thinking about results and instead think about experience. Ram Dass isn't dicking around when he says BE HERE NOW. 

So world of the interwebs, and my mom, I have officially finished my novel. I have managed to finish something I have been terrified to finish, because I haven't wanted to frog it up. But it is done and my mantra through out was "no judgment, not expectation." Did I live up to that? Hardly, but I had moments that were clear-eyed and true, moments that were just me and my characters in a room staring at each other saying, so enjoying the weather? And now I have the terrifying, exciting task of 1. selling the thing (not so process oriented) and 2. making something new. And here is where I get to embrace the moment. Not think of my next book, or my first one, but just write, just make work, generate pages and see what comes out. The joy of starting fresh is there are no limits to where I can take a story, no problems that need to be solved, no characters that need another level, it's just whatever it is. FUN! So I assume in the next week or two the writer's block will descend. Or I'll have to do more revising of the frogging book. Is anything every really finished? (another post all together)