I’ve been noodling all weekend with this blog entry. It’s my maiden voyage into this world, you see. And I want so very much to honor the work done by my fellow Diamonds that I think I have succeeded in giving myself an anxiety attack about it.
Sounds silly, I know, especially for someone who has been writing for years, who has spoken before crowds and even appeared on TV (in another life) – but there it is. Traumatized by the blank page. And burdened by super-high expectations and demands (all in my own head) that I be outstanding at this, even though I’ve never done it before, simply because I might disappoint those I respect and care about who will be reading this.
What to do, what to do? And then it hit me: talk about it to all of you. Now, this dithering might strike you as foolish, but you know – a blog is writing, after all. Perhaps I haven’t hesitated to pitch to agents and editors in the past, and succeeded at it. Perhaps I’ve had stories of mine published years ago. You can pile up the “perhapses” until they make a damned impressive mound. But in the last analysis, everyone who is in this business seriously will reach or has reached a clutch point, a moment of frozen inaction. For me, the Rubicon I was scared to cross – today -- was this.
When you get down to it, this isn’t any different, in its own way, from writing a manuscript, revising it to make it the best it can be, and then sending it out. The problem, wherever you encounter it, is really the same, though it appears to wear a different face. It’s those pesky expectations and demands. It’s being a perfectionist to the detriment of any possibility of success. It’s beating yourself up because you aren’t the indefatigable Nora Roberts. (I’d like to think she would laugh out loud at that notion; I hear she has a pretty good sense of humor.) It’s stalling on the launch of even something as minor as a blog entry because somewhere you were poisoned by the “it has to be perfect, or it isn’t worth doing.” Result? The dreaded blank page. Or screen, in this case.
Hockey great, Wayne Gretsky is credited with one of those stop-you-in-your-tracks statements that says it all in a few words – “You miss 100% of the shots you never take.” The obverse of that, of course, is that, even if you take one hundred shots, you will miss some of them. However, in this society, we have a tendency to immortalize those who succeed in big ways, shoving them onto pedestals too impossible for any of us “mere mortals” to scale. We forget that they all were where we are at some point in their lives. Roberts, like Gretsky, has taken scores of shots that missed. We just don’t hear about them. And once such individuals have reached that pinnacle of super success, the fact that not every shot they take now is the most superb act of grace they ever performed is pretty well disguised by the light of the halos that crown them. Halos we put there, by the way.
So, when it comes to our putting on our skates and taking up our hockey sticks to venture out onto the ice, we scare ourselves spitless with the specter of Mr. Gretsky, at al. We think nonsense like – “Oh, I’ll never be that good!” which quickly translates into “Maybe I’d better not go out there right now -- my skates aren’t the best -- I have lousy hand-eye coordination anyway – my friends will laugh at me, or worse, they’ll pity me for having pretended I could do this when it’s apparent I can’t.” And presto, we find other things to do, the most extreme being, in my view, to choose some form of house cleaning because we have terrified ourselves about that empty ice rink, or the blank page.
In the end, I decided, what is worse? Putting out something that can’t possibly qualify as “great” and may be only “passable”? Or leaving the page blank because I have created demons to torment myself, and thus cannot put anything out there at all? We won’t discuss the fact that, if I did that – ducked the task, I would have welched on a commitment, a responsibility, a trust with my fellow Diamond bloggers. No, let’s just focus on the fact that it is far more likely that if I succeeded in backing away from this page, I would find it that much easier to back away from the next task: revisions, editing, bouncing the mss. off my crit pals, prepping my query letter, entering that contest, pitching to the next agent or editor. And then the question I think I would have to ask myself is “Am I a writer, or am I only pretending?”
Well, I am actually pretty happy to say that, given that I have had something to write here, I have succeeded in defeating the demon for yet another day. Yes, he or one of his foul ilk will try to scare me into silence and non-performance tomorrow. But, and this is a very big “but,” at least right now I can say – “Today, I am a writer.”
Today, I have taken a shot. I’d like to think Mr. Gretsky would applaud.
Sounds silly, I know, especially for someone who has been writing for years, who has spoken before crowds and even appeared on TV (in another life) – but there it is. Traumatized by the blank page. And burdened by super-high expectations and demands (all in my own head) that I be outstanding at this, even though I’ve never done it before, simply because I might disappoint those I respect and care about who will be reading this.
What to do, what to do? And then it hit me: talk about it to all of you. Now, this dithering might strike you as foolish, but you know – a blog is writing, after all. Perhaps I haven’t hesitated to pitch to agents and editors in the past, and succeeded at it. Perhaps I’ve had stories of mine published years ago. You can pile up the “perhapses” until they make a damned impressive mound. But in the last analysis, everyone who is in this business seriously will reach or has reached a clutch point, a moment of frozen inaction. For me, the Rubicon I was scared to cross – today -- was this.
When you get down to it, this isn’t any different, in its own way, from writing a manuscript, revising it to make it the best it can be, and then sending it out. The problem, wherever you encounter it, is really the same, though it appears to wear a different face. It’s those pesky expectations and demands. It’s being a perfectionist to the detriment of any possibility of success. It’s beating yourself up because you aren’t the indefatigable Nora Roberts. (I’d like to think she would laugh out loud at that notion; I hear she has a pretty good sense of humor.) It’s stalling on the launch of even something as minor as a blog entry because somewhere you were poisoned by the “it has to be perfect, or it isn’t worth doing.” Result? The dreaded blank page. Or screen, in this case.
Hockey great, Wayne Gretsky is credited with one of those stop-you-in-your-tracks statements that says it all in a few words – “You miss 100% of the shots you never take.” The obverse of that, of course, is that, even if you take one hundred shots, you will miss some of them. However, in this society, we have a tendency to immortalize those who succeed in big ways, shoving them onto pedestals too impossible for any of us “mere mortals” to scale. We forget that they all were where we are at some point in their lives. Roberts, like Gretsky, has taken scores of shots that missed. We just don’t hear about them. And once such individuals have reached that pinnacle of super success, the fact that not every shot they take now is the most superb act of grace they ever performed is pretty well disguised by the light of the halos that crown them. Halos we put there, by the way.So, when it comes to our putting on our skates and taking up our hockey sticks to venture out onto the ice, we scare ourselves spitless with the specter of Mr. Gretsky, at al. We think nonsense like – “Oh, I’ll never be that good!” which quickly translates into “Maybe I’d better not go out there right now -- my skates aren’t the best -- I have lousy hand-eye coordination anyway – my friends will laugh at me, or worse, they’ll pity me for having pretended I could do this when it’s apparent I can’t.” And presto, we find other things to do, the most extreme being, in my view, to choose some form of house cleaning because we have terrified ourselves about that empty ice rink, or the blank page.
In the end, I decided, what is worse? Putting out something that can’t possibly qualify as “great” and may be only “passable”? Or leaving the page blank because I have created demons to torment myself, and thus cannot put anything out there at all? We won’t discuss the fact that, if I did that – ducked the task, I would have welched on a commitment, a responsibility, a trust with my fellow Diamond bloggers. No, let’s just focus on the fact that it is far more likely that if I succeeded in backing away from this page, I would find it that much easier to back away from the next task: revisions, editing, bouncing the mss. off my crit pals, prepping my query letter, entering that contest, pitching to the next agent or editor. And then the question I think I would have to ask myself is “Am I a writer, or am I only pretending?”
Well, I am actually pretty happy to say that, given that I have had something to write here, I have succeeded in defeating the demon for yet another day. Yes, he or one of his foul ilk will try to scare me into silence and non-performance tomorrow. But, and this is a very big “but,” at least right now I can say – “Today, I am a writer.”
Today, I have taken a shot. I’d like to think Mr. Gretsky would applaud.
--Juanita Salicrup
3 comments:
Great blog, the blank page is a challenge. You did an awesome job. I also struggled with my first blog, worried that I would be a flop. We are own worst enemy with the fear of the unknown/blank page. Excellent job and very thought provoking.
Lyn
Juanita, you did a wonderful job. Glad you went for it and faced the blank page. Excellent post.
For the a virgin blogger.LOL, it was great!!! We've all been there,worried we're not good enough. Go for it...Challenge the blank page...
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