SELF-DOUBT and GUILT

 

Self-doubt is not only an important part of an artist’s toolkit; it’s an essential aspect of being a good person, striving to do better. I think guilt serves a similar function.

 

Where both get a bad rap is when they exceed the boundaries of righting function and become wrecking balls. Being wrecked with self-doubt or wrecked by guilt deserves the boot.

Not helpful, get outta here, you’re only doing damage.

 

This post on the usefulness of self-doubt got me thinking. I was amid second drafting a novel and experiencing something I hadn’t before at that stage. I was liking my first draft.

It read well. How can this be? First drafts are not supposed to read this well. Have I lost my whatever it is that makes writers able to improve on what is, let’s face it, only the first draft?

 

 I was having self-doubts about not having self-doubts.

 

No worries. About a third way in, my first draft showed itself to be a mess in need of urgent triage and surgical repair. I was back to normal self-doubting me, and both breathing and heart rate stabilized.

 

Self-examination, acknowledging wrongs, attempting repairs and trying to do better are great tools. Just don’t let them go amok, because then they think they are the boss and will, if you let them, kill you.

 

Everything in moderation, Maimonides said. This eight-hundred- and fifty-year-old advice has aged well.

Gift from a Beggar

We’d arrived in Berkeley in the late fall of 1978. Little did we know this would be a historically significant time in the San Francisco Bay area. In only a week, the mass murder-suicide in Jonestown (of a cult whose roots were in the East Bay) would permeate the air. That foreshock lasted but nine days, when a supervisor in San Francisco’s city hall would shoot the mayor and the first openly gay supervisor, and the bay area ground would be rattled not by a physical, but an emotional quake.

My then boyfriend and I knew about the danger of earthquakes, and chose to move to the area anyway. We knew about San Francisco and Berkeley’s reputation as a social vanguard. If that included the sort of madness that engulfed and thickened the air everyone breathed, we had to take the good with the bad. We were new, and chucked it to The California Experience.

But that was not what we noticed most. From the very first day, what struck us  was how many people lived on the streets and how many were begging for spare change. We had lived in Ithaca, New York, for four years. We never saw street people there. The climate and the town’s people were inhospitable to such. I had seen beggars before, not only in movies but also in Jerusalem, where I grew up. These were blind, old, broken bodied people. They had their corner in downtown Jerusalem, and anyone could see they could not support themselves any other way. We never passed them without putting change into their tins. 

But Berkeley was full of young seemingly healthy and energetic beggars. This, more than the maddening news, struck us as peculiar. We assumed every one of them was in real need, for who in their right mind would spend their days asking for money if they could work?

And so we gave. And gave. And whenever asked, which was often, we gave again. If we didn’t have spare pocket change, we gave bills from our wallets.

A couple of months later, we had become jaded. New acquaintances informed us that most of the local beggars were drug addicts, and that our giving only perpetuated their habit. We stopped giving. In addition, our own funds were running low. It would be a few more months before we found jobs, and we had rent to pay.

Until one day, when a young beggar approached us on Telegraph Avenue, right by the intersection of Dwight Way, asking for spare change.

“Sorry, Man. We’re broke,” my boyfriend said. That was not literally true, but felt like it was in our near future.

The beggar stuck his hand into his deep pants’ pocket and doled a fistful of change. “Please take that,” he said. “You’re more broke. I had a good day.”

We tried to refuse, but he tried harder. He would not let us leave without taking some of his “spare.”

I don’t know what the answer is. But, forty years later, even as I continue to mostly pass local beggars by without giving, once in a while I see that beggar’s face and pull my pocket change out.

My Only Addiction

It’s too easy to look down on addicts. If you have never experienced such an affliction, you can feel smugly superior to the poor souls who allowed themselves to succumb. How pathetic they are, and how low they descend, risking everything for a fix.

I don’t seem to have the personality or misfortune to have had such challenges.

The first is a matter of propensity over which anyone can make decisions not to risk exposure. Long ago, at the age of five or six, I watched my nicotine-dependent father go out on a stormy, drenching rainy Friday night, hail a cab (expensive) to the outskirts of town, (Jerusalem) where the one and only small kiosk sold cigarettes on the Sabbath. He thought he had stashed an extra pack, but couldn’t find it.

It was a lesson in what not to do. No cigarettes, ever. Don’t want to have to haul that monkey on my back.

The second, the matter of luck, has to do with things that can happen and leave a person dependent. With two herniated discs in my lower back, I remember realizing how addiction to painkillers can start, and how understandable and insidious the process is.
That was two years plus ago. When my doctor prescribed narcotics, I never took them. I chose not to haul that monkey on my miserably aching back, either. But some folks don’t know what the doctor had given them before it’s too late, and the climb out of that hole is steep.

But I don’t feel superior, because I do have a sort of addiction, or maybe it’s closer to a dependence. Can you guess to what?

Yes, I can stop. I did without difficulty while pregnant. Twice.

And, NO, I don’t want to.

So there. Maybe this feeling of "I *need* my coffee" gives me a peek into addiction, and maybe what I really need is that insight and compassion in addition to the caffeine. Because smugness is unattractive and worse.

Oh, and one other thing--

REGRET is a Useless Emotion Unless...

It Prompts to Do Better Going Forward

I’ve heard actors and musicians say they don’t care to look at their own performances because they cringe at how they did something they should have done differently. For writers, the printed first edition can yield a similar emotion. There is much we’d change, rephrase, or cut. Now it’s set, and we can’t.

Life is like that. Once something has passed, regret can take over about the many things that we could’ve and maybe should’ve, and now we can’t do over.

I know people who are raked with regrets. It’s a useless loop that serves to paralyze. The functional among us “let it go,” which usually means we try to forget and move on.

But forgetting, while serving the purpose of getting the wheels to move, isn’t the best way. For my own process, there were times I wished I could be as good at forgetting as many people I have known. There’s at least one typo in each of my published books that gnaws on me, and I can’t do a thing about it. There are chapters in my life I would never “do” the same way.

I found a way to mentally handle these sorts of cant’-fix ‘em. I am not a Catholic, but I borrowed it from the Catholic confession, when at the end the priest says, “Now go and sin no more.” This echoes Jesus’ saying. (John 8, 11) The brilliance of confession is not the telling, or the penance. It’s an awareness combined with learning from mistakes and resolving to not repeat.

Nothing wasted— if we learn from it.

I will look at my performance. I will stare at these typos and awkward phrasings. I will remember where I dropped the ball. Then I will resolve to pay attention and to try not to repeat. Of course, I will repeat. But maybe not the same mistakes or sins, and maybe I will catch them earlier when I can fix something. It’s a process, and a mighty beneficial one.

In this way, regret becomes useful.

Don’t Over-protect Your Characters

The title of this post is also a post-it I have over my computer. Reminder to self.

In my first chapter book story, written with the hope to publish, the main character dealt with such challenging issues as wondering how to make others hear him, how to accept less than perfect days, and how to accept a new sibling. All this he did while his loving and supportive family was both nurturing and helpful. The boy had the childhood we all wished we had, and wish with all our might we have the wisdom to give to our children.

I think I wanted to wrap him in a warm and fluffy blanket and keep him from harm. No wonder this story was a non-starter as far as the publishing world goes.

You think I might have been over-protective?

It took me a while to allow my characters, a.k.a. my fictional children, to get into deep trouble. The kind of trouble I would hope my real-life children never will.

And then, of course, the characters find a way out of the bind. It could be they defeat some evil, solve an urgent practical problem, or accept a difficult aspect of life internally. But they had to be in deep doodoo to begin with. It was hard.

I’m still working on it. I know I’ve made progress because one beta reader asked me recently why the antagonists in my story had to be so awful. Couldn’t they be, well, more reasonable? I explained that they could, but then there isn’t any story to tell.

Editors sometimes refer to this as “raising the stakes.” Don’t fear it, face it, and the readers will have a chance to do the same.

Suggestions are NOT Commandments

Or-

Writers and Artists—Burn those “shoulds”

I was having a most rewarding talk with a multi-published and lauded writer, and we found that, from my modest perch and his lofty one, we came to see many of the writerly edicts as, at best, helpful suggestions. Unfortunately some of these suggestions are taught as indispensable commadments in creative writing classes, and repeated in interviews by respected creatives.

Here is a summary of a few of these suggestions, with a suggestion from me that if something is helpful to you, keep and cherish it. But please, PLEASE— don’t parcel it out as a commandment. We already have ten official ones, and many more unofficial ones, taught at our parents’ knees.

1. WRITE EVERY DAY. It is helpful for many, but in no way a measure of dedication or a predictor of good work.

2. READ A LOT OF SIMILAR BOOKS TO THE GENRE YOU ARE WRITING. I do the opposite, especially while working on a first draft. I don’t want “voice seepage” or derivative plotting. But some find that reading a lot of similar books revved their engines. Either is fine.

3. NEVER GIVE UP. You’re welcome to give up. Many times. As often as you need to.

4. NEVER ASSUME YOUR WORK WILL BE THE EXCEPTION THAT ALLOWS YOU TO BREAK “THE RULES.” This is true, and I don’t suggest anyone be presumptive of anything. But if we didn’t have rule-benders we would never break new ground, either.

5. BELIEVE IN YOURSELF AND YOUR WORK. That sounds nice and it is empowering. But I believe in something bigger, and pray that I do the best work I can. Sometimes it isn’t all that, y’know. If you believe in yourself that’s all right also.

6. IGNORE THIS BLOG POST AND OTHER CURMUDGEONLY ONE LIKE IT. This, I’m afraid, I wholeheartedly agree with. Be your own boss.

Social Media Faux-pas

I will assume that anyone commenting on a followed blog, or a Facebook page, or a tweet, means well. Almost all do. And let me tell you, sending thoughts out there and not getting comments is a very lonely thing. So they are not only welcome but wanted and appreciated.

But there are the well-meaning ones that manage to be remarkably unhelpful. Remarkable because they mean well. I’m not referring to the few that do not mean well, the trolls, or the ones coming out of folks who just got bad news and think misery loves company is a social commandment.

I have been the unlucky recipient of two of the examples below. But most come from others, friends and acquaintances, who either shared their pain with me or I was there to witness it. Even as they said nothing in retort, it was painfully obvious this was a backhanded compliment.

Examples:

“You never age!”

“You’re a miracle of preservation”

“How do you manage to stay so young looking?”

Nice, but what they really say, and in a public forum, (like commenting on new Facebook profile picture) is that you are in fact old. Thanks.

“Nice haircut. When will you grow your hair back?”

“I love what you did with your hair. I’ll send you my stylist’s number. You’ll love her.”

“Looks great. Is it Nice and Easy?”

Lovely, but what they really say is that your hair has suffered a misfortune in incompetent hands.

“I loved, just loved, your other book. When will you write another one like that one?”

“I got your book a year ago!” (No other comment. Yup, that’s it.)

“Your book is good for people interested in the subject.”

Sounds positive, but what they are really saying is they can’t recommend it, and need to post a public warning to that effect.

And then there are these doozies. If you’ve ever been in the vicinity of such utterances, you could feel the silent hissing:

“You look wonderful! Are you pregnant?” (Never a good idea to say this, especially to a man.)

“We’ve got to have you over. Maybe next May when our garden is blooming.” (Said in early June.)

“It’s nice that you write for children. Have you thought of writing a book for real people?”

This last one is one of only two that I actually received myself, and from my father. Ouch. Not telling which of the others was also given to me.

Okay, good people. Let’s not do any of that. 

About the Day of Atonement

On the eve of the most somber day in the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur, I think about what I have to atone for.

And then I realize I am always atoning for something. That’s an existential fact, at least for me. It’s a given that I could have, and should have, and didn’t do better.

I will forgive all the kind-hearted people who greet Jews tomorrow with a well meaning “Happy Yom Kippur.” I’ve been guilty of worse when it comes to unfamiliar cultures. I have a lot to learn about a lot of things.

{And what’s with the meal table? ^ It’s a day of fasting!}

So, no, this is not a happy holiday sort of day. Guilt is not a happy place. We're much happier when the day is done. But guilt has an important and legitimate function, as we who are Jewish know.

To anyone I may have offended, I'm sorry.

May you be signed and sealed in the book of life.