Heavy Equipment

Year Six -- Week 24 -- November 10, 2003


I broke out the heavy equipment to get the job done this week.

When I near the completion of a draft, doubt sets up camp in the backyard, waiting for the right time to pounce. I see her now through the window. She sits underneath the chestnut tree, staring into my workspace, smacking those ruby lips. She takes any scrap of opportunity, a slight hesitation, a momentary lapse in confidence, and boom, she’s in my head. And once she’s there, I can’t get rid of her. That’s why the last part of the novel is so hard to complete. The closer I get, the more opportunity she has.

At the end of a bad day, I typically reach a point where I think I'm useless. It's best for me to then shut down the computer, have a nightcap or two, sometimes three, and go to bed. The next morning I somehow get it together enough to hack away at where I left off. It’s my version of ‘Groundhog Day,’ but soon this cycle will be broken.

I have hope because the edges of Ms. Doubt are frayed. The realization hit home when my friend, Sloan Wainwright, gave me an excerpt from a letter that Martha Graham sent to Agnes DeMille. Sloan uses this in her songwriting workshops. Here it is:

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There is vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.

If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is: nor how valuable it is: nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.
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I took a piece of this and scotch taped it to the face of my computer monitor. Each morning I recite it aloud before working.

It is not my business to determine how good my writing is, how valuable it is, or how it compares with other expressions. My job is to keep writing.

If it were only that easy.

I am the King of Judgment and my court of self-criticism is in session daily. I have accumulated multiple lifetime sentences and I am banned from seeing myself as an artist. I am not eligible for appeal or parole. Only publication is redemption, or so I thought.

Martha says, to be an artist is to never be pleased and to be continually dissatisfied with ones work. There is no doubt that I am never pleased, and I am always dissatisfied. So maybe I am an artist.

Neurotic might be a better word.

Regardless, my job is to keep the channel open and be aware of the urges that motivate me. Early on, power, greed and revenge, drove me to write. Six years later, those motivating factors have lost their vitality. There are much easier ways to make a buck and I long ago lost the anger.

I guess I thought I’d just hit it quick. I knew the odds of doing that were worse than winning the lottery, but I was arrogant enough to think I had talent and something worth saying, so I kept at it. For some, taking a year off to write a book is enough. They write it, get rejected, and return to whatever they did before, satisfied that they took their shot. They got it out of their system and believe that if they had really wanted to do it, they could have.

The thing is, if you are a truly writer, you can’t get it out of your system, and there’s the rub, the joy of the affliction. It’s what gets you through years of rejection, it’s that blessed unrest that keeps you marching and makes you more alive than others, and it’s inside me, and I am unable to do anything about it except to keep writing.

And so one day in the near future that novel will be finished.