are you a super genius or a trash raccoon?
or maybe both! inspiration from Jesse Q. Sutanto, Annie Dillard, and Chloe Benjamin
Hi there! I’m trying out some new formats on Write More, and this is a little love, where I’ll highlight a brief piece of writing I love, then give a suggestion for how that might launch you into your own writing.
Do you have a little love you’d love to share? Feel free to email me with a suggestion!
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I read Jesse Q. Sutanto’s Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers on vacation this spring, and it was a perfect sit-by-the-pool read. (As
and I talked about over at her great reading recommendation newsletter, What to Read If, it fits into the very specific subgenre of “quirky groups of people coming together to form unlikely communities” (and, in this case, to solve a murder! what more could you want?).)But there was one particular passage, from the point of view of one of the characters is an artist who’s having trouble finding her way back to her work, that just stopped me in my tracks:
This is the problem with creative people; their self-image is divided into two parts–one thinks that they’re a genius who will one day create a masterpiece of such breathtaking brilliance that it will still be discussed with reverence hundreds of years later; the other part thinks they are trash raccoons rooting around in the dark and coming up with nothing but more trash. There is no in-between. It’s either ‘super genius’ or ‘trash raccoon’ and somehow these parts exist within the head of one very tortured artist.”
Does that resonate with you? Have you ever felt like a super genius or a trash raccoon? Maybe both? On the same day?
Before we totally indulge in some trash raccoon wallowing, though, I wanted to offer an alternate perspective, from Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life:
Another luxury for idle imagination is the writer’s own feeling about the work. There is neither a proportional relationship, nor an inverse one, between a writer’s estimation of the work in progress and its actual quality. The feeling that the work is magnificent, and the feeling that it is abominable, are both mosquitoes to be repelled, ignored, or killed, but not indulged.
So however you feel about your work—whether you think it’s the best thing you’ve ever done, or trash you could never bear to show anyone—that actually doesn’t matter when you’re making it. Your job, at least as you’re writing, is to do the work, not judge it.
Any good tips for repelling the mosquito of self-judgment as you write?
I’ve been thinking about my friend Chloe Benjamin’s essay about writing and chronic pain, and how she had to train herself to “put boundaries around my brain”:
I used to stay awake in bed thinking about a problem in my book, which was impacting my sleep. I don’t do that anymore. When I started this journey, I had to say to myself, like a dog, Drop it. Drop it. Sometimes it would take 15 or 20 times. But I’ve trained myself to create that boundary.
(I’d misremembered it and was saying put it down to myself, but the idea stands.)
(I interviewed Chloe here, where she talked about writing for rejection and searching for joy in her writing process, if you’d like to read more wisdom from her.)
even more to love, from the Write More archive
making small changes, with advice from Nicole Chung
on moving forward with small steps
Write More, Be Less Careful is a newsletter about why writing is hard & how to do it anyway. You can find my books here and read other recent writing here. If you’d like occasional dog photos, glimpses of my walks around town, and writing process snapshots, find me on instagram.
If Write More has helped you in your creative life, I’d love it if you would share it with a friend.
Thanks for the shoutout! And, yes, that book is such a joy.
I just know I have to keep writing, even if the critic in my head yells how worthless it all is. It’s funny how the thing that terrifies me most is inside me.