On Creative Courage, Letter 6

Or, embracing the extremes of the creative process

This is the last letter in a 6-part correspondence series between writer Henriette Lazaridis and me, Meta Wagner. Henriette wrote three letters at The Entropy Hotel and I’ve written three here at Page Fright, and they’re cross-posted. Here are the links to all the previous letters:  letter 1, letter 2, letter 3, letter 4, letter 5.

Dear Henriette,

I’ve really enjoyed our correspondence on creative courage. You’ve been an ideal pen pal. (And one of these days, we’ll actually get to meet in person!)

You gave us all a lot to think about in letter 5. I was especially taken with your observation that in writing and in life, “bravery and fear are twined together.” I completely agree. In fact, I believe the creative process is comprised of opposites: bravery/fear, inspiration/hard work, community/loneliness, freedom/discipline, excitement/boredom, and so on.

Many people approach creative writing with a set of hopes (expectations?) that their experience will be reliably and consistently positive when, in reality, it is so often alternately positive and negative. Looking at my pairings, it’s obvious that I listed the “positives” first and the “negatives” second. Excitement, for instance, sure feels better and produces more and better work than boredom, right? Maybe, maybe not.

When I’m bored while writing—usually because I’m stuck or my heart’s not fully in it—I tend to do what many of us do when we want to appear productive: launch myself, headlong, down some rabbit hole of research! I’ll look up a famous quote to make sure I’ve got it right and am attributing it to the correct person. An avoidance technique, right? Sure, but maybe, just maybe, I’ll read the sentence before or after the quote and it will make me understand it in a different or deeper way, and this will spark a new thought for me, and…you get the idea.

Constantly chasing one state of being while attempting to avoid its opposite state does not allow for the possibility that both serve a meaningful—maybe even necessary—purpose.

I think about it this way: I’m a New Englander who hates winter (especially on days like today with the dreaded snow/sleet/hail mix). I close my shades and turn the lights on bright to pretend it isn’t dark out at some ungodly hour. I check the weather map to figure out which city has mild winters and non-frizzy-haired summers (and my progressive political leanings—no easy feat). I fantasize about chasing summer around the globe and never having to wear a puffy jacket or Uggs gloves ever again. But I also wonder: would I appreciate spring/summer as much if I didn’t have to endure the unbearable winters?

The truth is, my answer depends on when I ask myself the question. I respond one way in February when I’m at my lowest. (Yes, I’d appreciate gorgeous weather if I got to experience it year round. Hell, yes!). But I respond another way at the end of every college spring semester (which, in fairness, should be called the winter semester) during the first glorious day at the end of April when I walk through the Boston Common and feel the sun on my face and the lovely shade cast by the flowering trees. I’m filled with the happiness of my own pleasure and relief and that of the throngs of people prematurely wearing shorts and flip flops, sunbathing, falling in love, drinking iced coffee—doing all the spring things. And I’ll be reminded once again that the winter cold has made me especially appreciative of the warmth, the darkness the light, the despair the hopefulness. They’re “twined together.”

Neurobiologist Alice Flaherty, the author of the fascinating book The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain, understands this interplay of opposites very well. She brings an interesting perspective to another seemingly oppositional pair related to the creative writing process: joy and suffering. “Suffering” may feel like an overly charged description, but I do think creative people experience a sort of suffering when they believe the muse has abandoned them.

As Flaherty explains, joy from widely different causes activates the same brain systems (often the opiate systems). Likewise, varied causes of suffering activate a unified pain pathway. In fact, there seems to be a push-pull relationship between the two. From a neurological standpoint, pleasure and pain systems in the brain do not cancel each other out, they co-exist.

Or, as Flaherty describes it, “Suffering and joy are inseparable, the opposites not of each other but of blandness.”

This is true, isn’t it?! Returning to my weather analogy, would I really trade the worst extremes of winter for a permanent New England early April? Not too warm, not too cold—just blah, 50s, overcast. I don’t even have to think about this one: the answer’s a resounding no!

Beware of blandness, embrace the opposing extremes, and see where your writing takes you next.

Yours truly,

Meta

Readers, thanks so much for following along with this correspondence. We’ll return to regularly scheduled programming :) next, but in the meantime: what do you do to either avoid or embrace the extremes of the creative process? What impact has your approach had on your writing?