Reader,
You know that moment where you read something and discover that the author has, unwittingly, described YOU?
That happened to me earlier this year when I was reading The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler:
Parisian perfectionists care very much about how well they perform and what others think of them, but they feel a peculiar sense of embarrassment about how much they care. This is because they carry within them a heightened sense of the ever popular "Who do you think you are?" insecurity chip. Revealing how much they're invested is a vulnerable act for this type of perfectionist, who cannot help but be emotionally influenced by others' perception of them and, whether they admit it or not, hold a strong desire to please others.
I'd already been surprised to discover that I am, according to Schafler's quiz, a "Parisian perfectionist." But when I came to this page and read these lines, I felt a whole host of emotions. (Emotions that, true to form, I kept to myself.)
This was true of me even as a child. I'll never forget watching Matthew die in Anne of Green Gables. Stricken with tears that I dared not shed, I turned to my younger brother and started to laugh. The rest of my family was reasonably annoyed at me for ruining the scene, but my ploy worked: no one suspected what I was actually feeling.
This tendency is a terrible obstacle when it comes to being creative, especially if you want to be creative in a playful manner.
Risk is a necessary ingredient of both creativity and play. Kids intuitively understand this, which is why we're constantly yelling "Get down from there!" and begging them to "Be careful!" They know that safe play is boring. And the same is true of safe writing.
Renowned ghostwriter J. R. Moehringer captured this perfectly as he described two projects that never saw the light of day:
I’ve never taken a ghosting gig for the money. But twice I felt that I had no choice, that the story was too cool, the author just too compelling, and twice the author freaked out at my first draft. Twice I explained that first drafts are always flawed, that error is the mother of truth, but it wasn’t just the errors. It was the confessions, the revelations, the cold-blooded honesty that memoir requires. Everyone says they want to get raw until they see how raw feels.
(I'd suggest that Moehringer's statement is not just true of memoir, but that's a topic for another day.)
Of course, there must be boundaries. We don't let kids play on train tracks or beside interstate offramps. We teach them to pre-consider potential consequences. And as creatives, we choose what vulnerabilities to share, and with whom.
But here's the cold, hard truth: if there's not a risk of being embarrassed, of falling flat on your face, of being judged and found wanting, then you won't be able to access the playful side of your creativity.
A prompt, for those who need or want it: Make a list of writing ideas that didn't pursue because you were uncomfortable with the risks. Then describe those risks. When you see them spelled out on the page, are they more or less frightening than before?
Keep your stick on the ice.
Frank.