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Joy_I_Am
United Kingdom
138 Posts |
 Posted - 06/08/2011 : 03:08:02
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Of course, simply and clearly, I have to concede that my current pain is to do with writer's block. I've been blocked for over a year now, because it seems such a huge and insurmountable thing to write something, and invest all your heart and soul in it, and all your time, and possibly never sell or publish it.
When I DO write, I tend to get a great response and win prizes and get approached by publishers and producers. It's really hard to get an agent these days, but agents were approaching me. Then I wrote a novel which didn't sell immediately, and instructed my agent to withdraw it after six or so knockbacks. I figured I could rewrite it and make it better. But then the paralysis kicked in. I should probably have left it out there longer, but old parental shame kicked in - 'You see, you're just an embarrassment!' - and I freaked.
So now I need to get back on the horsie! The TMS approach, I think, would be to 'just get on with it'! In fact - TMI alert - when I DO write, my habitual constipation immediately lets up! How much clearer could it be? Literally 'blocked'!
So, just writing this helps - I hope any of you creatives out there will recognise this - and I know what to do...
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GMack
USA
10 Posts |
Posted - 06/08/2011 : 11:08:54
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Hi Joy
Yes your physical symptoms certainly sound like classic TMS to me.
I find if I write for an audience I get blocked -- sort of the writer's equivalent of stage fright. But years ago I discovered that if I have a mindset to write only to amuse myself, just because I like writing, and don't allow myself to wonder what readers or publishers will think, then it flows much better.
That being said, writing is not my "real job" so I don't much care if I'm published or not. If writing is your source of income it may be a lot harder to do. But we know thoughts create feelings which create TMS, so try changing your thoughts about it and see if that helps.
Best of luck and let us know how it turns out. |
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art
1903 Posts |
Posted - 06/08/2011 : 13:35:43
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I'm a freelancer, mostly personal essay. To tell you the truth, I don't much believe in writer's block, at least for myself. Sometimes I have the feeling I've plenty to say, sometimes I'm dry as dust. But even in the latter case, just putting the words down sometimes leads to something worthwhile.
All that said, I certainly do believe in feeling oppressed, overwhelmed, depressed, and sick to near puking at the very thought of trying to write.
Writing's hard. Very few can do it. If you're getting all that positive attention, it would be a shame to waste it, which it seems you've figured out for yourself.
So. Get writing :>) |
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spodnic
United Kingdom
1 Posts |
Posted - 06/13/2011 : 06:43:27
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Hi, first post, be gentle.
Sounds to me like fear of failure. That's what I suffer from. |
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Joy_I_Am
United Kingdom
138 Posts |
Posted - 06/14/2011 : 04:10:55
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Dear Art,
Your posts give me such food for thought! I agree, writers' block is an indulgence in a way, and I think it can be beaten by just applying your ar$e to the seat... Rather, I think what happened to me was a kind of breakdown - I also stopped going out, stopped seeing people, became depressed... and it all came down to this fear of failing, the first big failure I'd had in my career - and I'd worked so hard to overcome my fears to get that far.
I think my novel knockback triggered old patterns set up by my parents (who were cold and underwhelmed when my first book of stories came out - I realise now they are just jealous narcissists, angry about any positive attention I get from others, but at the time it was devastating, I couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong). With more self-esteem, I'd have kept putting the novel out there - loads of people have twenty or thirty or more rejections before they're published, and I withdrew it at six... (slaps forehead).
I also think the problem is that everyone - publishers, my agent - wants The Novel. The sort of thing I'm good at are short stories, dramas, and short, snappy, humorous opinion pieces - I had a gig for years in a national newspaper doing the latter, and it was great fun - I enjoyed just those challenges that Art describes. But these are just chopped liver, it must be The Novel...
I don't know whether it would just be fearful and avoidant to give up on a novel and stick with stories - or whether it would be playing to my strengths. I'd like to at least give a longer book a try, but I've lost my sense of play about it. And all the good things in my life, I've achieved by overcoming my fears and my limiting background, and just being brave! I can't seem to reach in and find that any more.
But this is becoming a novel in itself... I think all creative work can be very good for your soul and your self-development, it does toughen you up in many ways, makes you work hard and fearlessly, and examine your standards and your authentic self. I need to get my hope back.
Gosh, just writing this has helped me, even if it's bored the rest of you! Thanks, Art and GMack and Spodnic, for your input, you've given me a lot to think about. J |
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Joy_I_Am
United Kingdom
138 Posts |
Posted - 06/14/2011 : 04:36:00
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PS I just want to make it clear that, when I make these rather non-British 'I am kinda good at this' type of statements, I am not being Mrs Big Head! Please believe me when I say it has taken me DECADES of self-work just to be able to acknowledge that I am not a miserable worm and am okay as a human being and have the right to use whatever abilities I may have without shame, just as we all do...
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art
1903 Posts |
Posted - 06/14/2011 : 07:46:10
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In one sense it's completely ridiculous to give other people advice, especially Internet strangers, but that's never stopped me before :>)..
If it were I, I'd ditch the novel for the time being. Plenty of very fine writers have been destroyed by trying to write The Big One. And even when they manage to get it done, the pressure for THe NEXt Big One, and t hat's always there, can be even greater. Just look at Ralph Ellison. I'm speaking now to certain personality types, the types who tend to get their self-worth all tied into their art. This obviously can be devastating...
I'm not much in the world of writing. ONly a modest amount of talent, one or two essays a year in literary mags, a little of this, a little of that. By now I don't get much of a self-esteem bump when my work gets accepted, and in my opinion that's healthier than going over the moon because one must soon crash back to earth (not saying of course that you're doing this as I don't think you are)...
My advice (there I go again) is to simply write. Get back to basics. Write those short humor pieces of yours They're fun, and they're validating and you keep your hand in. Did you say you write short stories? Man I wish I could. I've always considered that real writing. The stuff we literary geeks dream about doing in high school after reading somebody like Sherwood Anderson with all that romance and nostalgia and pain.
Above all enjoy your talent. We all need to feel we're good at something..
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jegol71
USA
78 Posts |
Posted - 06/15/2011 : 19:16:09
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Hi Joy,
Second post, so please feel free to muffle the clanking of the training wheels in the background by humming to yourself.
I'm a writer too: short stories, screenplays, medical texts, love letters on napkins, you name it. I am currently writing a narrative non-fiction novel on my psychosomatic journey (and of course other things undiscovered so far), and I think I have averaged eighteen words a day over the past two months (not counting the diarrhea of notes and streams of consciousness, which number about 200 amorphous pages).
As an artist, you have chosen to transduce the pressures taken in your inner and outer worlds into the product of your trade, which is just another pressure, and explains why artists and their wares are heralded as exponents of the world's stress at large. If the artist's work tanks on the stock market of public sentiment, it is explicitly translated into a failure of the person, no matter how much coddling is available after the fact. So congratulations for distancing yourself from the populace, whose art stops at their dreams, and for whom we work after ourselves.
I want to make boldface all you've already said and validate it with a congruent experience that's out there in the ether. I struggled to construct the proper narrative for my book, particularly about what I wanted to say in the latter part, after I absorbed my pain into a re-framing of my life story. I am now living TMS by writing about it, with a headache that won't quit keeping me clear about how much this project freaks me out. So I have decided to write out the last part in real time to the reader, where I jump from the story of the past into the active physical pain of finishing the book, which completes the novel's intention and proves its thesis.
We are all writing our stories out, whether with pen and papyrus or mortar and pestle, and they are being compiled as they go, and we are staying students of them even when their purposes hide. I hope yours continue to sell.
Jared |
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Joy_I_Am
United Kingdom
138 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2011 : 04:21:18
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Lovely advice, you lovely people! Thanks!
Art, I take your advice in the spirit it's intended! It's the most heartening, encouraging thing anyone's said to me for a long time, and has given me a real burst of creative energy, and an idea for a short project, and where I might be able to place it. Bless you! I agree that I don't get the air-punching glee when I sell something now; you start to become accustomed to the idea that it's not going to change your life, don't you? But it's a real achievement to get work published at all these days, and just such a personal pleasure to have work completed and showable to your satisfaction.
Jared, your novel sounds fascinating, and a great way of spreading the TMS word - good luck with that project. I hope it works through your headache and brings you out the other side. The napkin love letters, too, sound delightful! I recognise that work rate, though... you remind me of James Joyce, despairing that he'd only written seven words one day. A friend said 'But James, seven is good for you!' Joyce replied 'But I don't know what order they go in!'
J |
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elinor
USA
7 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2011 : 10:37:46
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i am a fine artist myself, a photographer, and i just wanted to say that many times i have to treat creating work like going to the Gym...i have to force myself get back to it, and spend a few photo sessions making bad work before one good image comes...and since i figured it out, and think of it in that 'going to the gym' way,and not wait for something amazing to inspire, just do work, even if it's mediocre, i have been much more productive.
and then i have to go to the gym literally and deal with the TMS in my knees... :-) |
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art
1903 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2011 : 13:18:56
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Hi Elinor,
Don't want to embarrass you, but you're quite an accomplished artist. Welcome to the forum. I'm virtually certain you'll find this knee thing easy to deal with. Nothing fancy required; just basically stop worrying about it.
Like you, I had good success in the beginning just reading the book (HBP). But for some reason the back seemed easier for me to buy in terms of being psychosomatic. It's gotten tougher since then. For one thing I'm a runner, and runners of course get injured. For another, I'm now 60. Yikes. So there's a lot to sort through.
Try to think in terms of patterns. TMS tends to recur in ways that if you pay attention become recognizable.
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elinor
USA
7 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2011 : 20:57:34
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i am a runner too! and 40...not a kid. thank you for your kind words...
this is very helpful.
but...doesn't it supposed to get easier to get rid of TMS once you have done it already...? that's the confusing thing to me. i got rid of my 2 years long back pain, then got rid other TMS issues pretty quickly once i recognize that it was TMS...a week or two and it was gone, completely gone, and this knee pain is, as mild as it is, started in October and is still here...at least i see that going back to running and dancing doesn't make it worse, so i am slowly going back to my normal physical activities.
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Edited by - elinor on 06/16/2011 20:58:52 |
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art
1903 Posts |
Posted - 06/17/2011 : 05:09:18
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I'd say the answer's within you. That is, take a long look at how you're responding to this kneee pain vs. how you responded to the other two. If my guess is right, when it didn't immediately disappear, you began to have doubts. Doubt leads to fear and fear isn't good...
Moreover (I try to use that word as least once a day :-), we're not the same people we were last year or the year before when we did "x" and "y" happened. We get older, and that changes us. Life is stressful, aging is difficult. 40 is spectacularly young from my vantage point, but it's your vantage point that matters. For some women 40 is a challenge as they begin to approach certain milestones...
I'm just throwing stuff out there of course, but I'm sure you take my point. We're complicated, ever evolving organisms. Every experience is going to be just a little bit different... |
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Wavy Soul
USA
779 Posts |
Posted - 06/17/2011 : 07:58:50
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Art, did you get my email last week? Sent via forum as it bounced back through the airwaves.
Ah yes, writing. Even JOURNALING has been giving me symptoms - in fact the very intention, which I have made, accountable to a counselor, to journal every day for TMS purposes - has me quite nervous. I'm supposed to write out a history of my challenges with my bod, those that were TMS and those that weren't, and I think I'm too angry to do it. So I'm distracting myself by feeling worse - too bad to write.
Then once I finish that therapeutic project, in a week, I have someone waiting to assist me in starting to sort out all the writing in my computer, and start to craft a first book out of it. I suspect that all kinds of issues are involved and will have to notice any distracting TMStrategies.
Good luck with your art everyone.
Love is the answer, whatever the question |
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art
1903 Posts |
Posted - 06/17/2011 : 10:08:14
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Hi Wavy,
I have to fix that as it's an old account.
Use 55pushups@gmail.com |
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elinor
USA
7 Posts |
Posted - 06/17/2011 : 10:30:59
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thank you Art, you are right and wise, and i will think about your generous words, thank you.
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Singer_Artist
USA
1516 Posts |
Posted - 06/22/2011 : 17:09:20
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I can relate, Joy I Am..Since the loss of my surrogate brother/best friend and one of my dogs I haven't picked up a brush to paint or wrote any music. I did record in the studio once but they are pushing me to finish an album for a band in Chicago and now my neck is freaking out..so once again it is postponed..It is frustrating how much TMS can take over one's life in a heart beat..I hope you get back this block asap!
From a fellow artist,
Karen |
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artistic temperament
