doing things badly

slump city baby

Hi, it’s been a while. That is due to many real-life things going on, plus some creative droughts. I am not someone who can create in the face of adversity. The years have proven to me that I cannot change this, so I will learn to accept it. I absolutely put myself and my struggles into my work, but I am not very “productive” while I’m actively in the swamp. Stubbornly trying to pull yourself out only makes it worse; you have to slither out sideways, or at least that’s what the movies always told me about falling in mud.

writing update

A couple of months ago I did manage to stitch together a significant amount of outline for Nine Doves. I’ve had the bones of the story in place in my head for years, but I think that makes outlining more difficult, if anything. It’s already fossilized in my mind and I struggle with pinning it down on a board to examine. I’m a very neurotic individual and while I don’t need things to be perfect on the first try, I do need to be able to make sense of it, and if I can’t process something then I simply can’t work on it at all. But I finally did find a method to tack out the plot points for Nine Doves where I can see them, and although it feels like there are a lot of empty patches and odd spots, I’ve done the most that I can this way. Anything further will have to result from having drafted it and found it wanting. I wish that I wasn’t such an exploratory drafter, but I learn tasks best by doing them with my own hands. I have to write something to figure out how it works. That doesn’t mean that I draft perfectly, or even very well; it means that I have to run into several walls before I find the actual road. Each attempt shows me what doesn’t work, and in the process of deciding what doesn’t work and why it doesn’t work, that tells me what I do want and what would work instead. So, unfortunately, I can’t write a good book using the outling→drafting→revising series of events. I wish my process was that clean! I sketch part of an outline, I draft to feel my way through it, I pick at the parts that don’t work until they bleed, I rework my notes, I draft more bits, I fry them on the stovetop until they are charred, I shred my notes and start a new set, I rework the draft and get a bit further. Repeat ad nauseum. I am still learning, and even now I work differently than I did a few years ago. Maybe a few years from now I won’t understand how I ever managed this way. I think that my unhappiness with it is indicative that it will change in time.

You will notice that I repeatedly framed all of that as some regrettable curse. I do really enjoy writing, I think that I’m pretty good at it, and I think that my stories can find an audience. Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing this at all. I am still working on doing things for the experience of doing them. I’ll use a different example.

being bad at things

For about a year now, I’ve been singing in my car whenever I drive alone. I did choir as a child for several years, felt ambivalent about it, was thoroughly mediocre, and quit at some point. I am not a good singer — having half-applied yourself to something in childhood does not translate to adult capabilities, especially with this, as your voice changes significantly between then and now. I had no sense of what my adult range was or how to sing at all, not even breathwork. If I were pursuing this professionally, because it was a skill that I desired, I would run through so many specific exercises designed to help me hone that skill under the advice of a professional. But I began singing in my car because I had reached a breaking point in my life. It was the result of a specific set of circumstances that I cannot or will not do anything to change, but that is largely untenable for me, so this low point has happened before and will almost certainly happen again. I was driving home after having been treated horrendously and was wildly triggered, trying to avoid crying and losing it altogether, and I started yelling along to the song playing on the radio. It wasn’t an angry song. It was just an outpouring of my grief and frustration, a spontaneous thing that I did for the sake of doing it, because it was the doing of it that brought me some moment of catharsis. It was not something that I did for the sake of being skilled at it someday. I’ve kept doing it, because I realized (later, not in that moment) that it’s something that I enjoy doing and it provides me with some outlet. Moreover, I enjoy being bad at it. I don’t want to take classes and improve and perform for others to appreciate. Although I have organically improved a little bit over the months that I’ve done it, I’m still bad at it. I want to continue singing by myself, however it may sound, as an outlet for my feelings when they are overwhelming and as a way of expressing joy when I feel that. That’s all. Recently I saw someone online say that singing is simply something that humans do, rather than something that is only allowed for those who have trained to be good at it, and I agree with that a lot. Nobody will throw rocks at you for singing badly in the privacy of your own car or home. It’s just an action, not a talent. I will leave the performing to people who are dedicated to pursuing the skill of singing, but that doesn’t mean that I am barred from the act of singing myself.

Plenty of people recommend doing things for the process rather than in pursuit of the end result, but I think that should be presented differently. You can get to that point, but before that, I think you need to do things badly. Rip off the “enjoy the process” band-aid and look at the wound underneath; just be bad at it. In doing so, as it closes up, you’ll develop an enjoyment of the process. Plenty of people have also said that you need to write badly before you can make a good book, which is also true, but I am modifying both of these ideas somewhat. You need to have a thing that you do badly for the sake of it in order to do other things well. Not something where you are momentarily tolerating the badness because you anticipate someday overcoming that and being good at it. That’s cheating. You’re cheating yourself out of the badness by telling yourself that it’s only temporary anyway. You can’t truly accept being bad at something if, in the back of your mind, you are still reassuring yourself with “someday I’ll be better at it anyway if only I persevere.” Plan on being bad at it forever, and then you know you’ve accepted the doing of the thing rather than the skill of the thing. Any improvement is incidental, and a joyful surprise, which I have found is much more rewarding than reaching it through a planned attack. I’m not saying that you should do this with everything. Reserve a thing or two in your life for doing badly, and I’ve found that it helps a lot with the other things that you plan to be good at. If you want to do everything well, you will never do anything well, and no one is an exception to that.

Yes, my writing will always involve drafting that is later refined into something good. But I don’t ever plan to pursue the skill of singing in a serious, “professional” way. It’s my thing that I do badly for the sake of it, and my writing is the thing that I pursue as a skill to improve and eventually present for viewing. They exist on separate paths, and I do them for separate reasons. But I think you have to have something that you are comfortably bad at in order to be good at other things. It’s reassuring, it’s refreshing, it’s fun, it’s cathartic when it needs to be, it reminds you of the joys of exploration and the surprise of having improved at something incidentally, rather than as an intended end result. And you might already get all of those things from your writing, or whatever chosen path or hobby you have, but this way you can thin out the load upon that other craft and let yourself breathe with it some more. Put multiple support beams in your creative house. Not all of them have to carry the same weight; it’s better if they don’t. I don’t care if that analogy does not translate to actual construction, because this is a fake house that I created for my own use. And that’s another useful attitude to have, too.

“But I’m embarrassed by being bad at something even if no one else knows about it” what are you, a cop? Kill that guy, he feeds off of your misery and so has an incentive to perpetuate it above anything else. Self-policing to such a degree is more embarrassing than anything you could possibly do badly. I would be mortified if anyone else heard my bad singing, but nobody ever has to, and that’s the beauty of it. It’s mine.