"Passion is suffering, and maybe we need to stop romanticising that suffering." That quote comes from this YouTube video, which is based around an analysis of the Studio Ghibli animated film Whisper of the Heart (which is available on Netflix). I'd encourage people to watch both. The film is probably the best visual story I've seen about the creative drive.
I've been meaning to start a thread like this for a while. As some here know, I've had a mild case of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for the past decade or so, which (except at first) has never been very debilitating, but which has certainly stopped me doing some of the things I loved. What it never stopped me doing was writing, though it often meant I could do less than I wanted. I'd always attributed this energy breakdown to overtraining at running in 2011, but recently I've had cause to re-evaluate that, and I now think that the self-inflicted pressures I felt as a writer have been more responsible than I thought.
These pressures can be summed up as "wanting my writing to get somewhere". Quite what this "somewhere" was remained vague, but it definitely involved being published and reaching a decent number of readers. The more I worried that this didn't seem likely to happen, the more I fretted about everything in the stories being as perfect as I could get it, so as not to hamper their already slim chances. Because I tend to have complex plots, there was a lot of stress about everything tying up and all the arcs reaching a satisfying conclusion, and so on. I wanted my work to fit every piece of convincing-sounding writing advice I'd ever come across, even where it conflicted with other advice.
Since realising the extent of these pressures over the summer, I've tried to retrain myself to focus only on the writing itself, and put off any thoughts about what might happen to it in the end. It has been difficult to stop my mind wandering to aspects of future marketing or target audiences, and I know that eventually those things will probably have to be tackled. But I'm hoping that by that stage I will have recovered some of my energy, and I might have retrained myself well enough so that I can look on the eventual fate of the stories out in the wide world as less consequential than their existence. It seems to have worked to some extent: my energy has improved slightly, and I no longer browse the SFF or YA shelves in a bookshop with a feeling of panic that my stories just don't belong on them.
I'm not sure we talk about this kind of thing enough. Talking with friends has shown me I'm not the only one who has this kind of conflicted relationship with writing. Perhaps we think it's a bit weird to talk about the negative aspects of something we do entirely voluntarily, but is creativity truly voluntary? Scott (in the video) is correct that there's a romantic idea that any sacrifice is worthwhile to pursue a true passion, but that probably jars against the everyday life pressures of almost every artist.
I think it's healthy to come to some kind of accommodation with the possibility that our creative dreams might not be fulfilled. I don't think I've reached that accommodation yet; I've just put off thinking about it. Maybe some here always had much more realistic dreams in the first place. I'd be interested to hear what you think.
I've been meaning to start a thread like this for a while. As some here know, I've had a mild case of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for the past decade or so, which (except at first) has never been very debilitating, but which has certainly stopped me doing some of the things I loved. What it never stopped me doing was writing, though it often meant I could do less than I wanted. I'd always attributed this energy breakdown to overtraining at running in 2011, but recently I've had cause to re-evaluate that, and I now think that the self-inflicted pressures I felt as a writer have been more responsible than I thought.
These pressures can be summed up as "wanting my writing to get somewhere". Quite what this "somewhere" was remained vague, but it definitely involved being published and reaching a decent number of readers. The more I worried that this didn't seem likely to happen, the more I fretted about everything in the stories being as perfect as I could get it, so as not to hamper their already slim chances. Because I tend to have complex plots, there was a lot of stress about everything tying up and all the arcs reaching a satisfying conclusion, and so on. I wanted my work to fit every piece of convincing-sounding writing advice I'd ever come across, even where it conflicted with other advice.
Since realising the extent of these pressures over the summer, I've tried to retrain myself to focus only on the writing itself, and put off any thoughts about what might happen to it in the end. It has been difficult to stop my mind wandering to aspects of future marketing or target audiences, and I know that eventually those things will probably have to be tackled. But I'm hoping that by that stage I will have recovered some of my energy, and I might have retrained myself well enough so that I can look on the eventual fate of the stories out in the wide world as less consequential than their existence. It seems to have worked to some extent: my energy has improved slightly, and I no longer browse the SFF or YA shelves in a bookshop with a feeling of panic that my stories just don't belong on them.
I'm not sure we talk about this kind of thing enough. Talking with friends has shown me I'm not the only one who has this kind of conflicted relationship with writing. Perhaps we think it's a bit weird to talk about the negative aspects of something we do entirely voluntarily, but is creativity truly voluntary? Scott (in the video) is correct that there's a romantic idea that any sacrifice is worthwhile to pursue a true passion, but that probably jars against the everyday life pressures of almost every artist.
I think it's healthy to come to some kind of accommodation with the possibility that our creative dreams might not be fulfilled. I don't think I've reached that accommodation yet; I've just put off thinking about it. Maybe some here always had much more realistic dreams in the first place. I'd be interested to hear what you think.
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