Writing, Pottery, and the War of Art
March 2024: A letter for people who are interested in the creative process.
Dear family, friends, and Internet strangers,
Weeks ago, I started writing a letter for this month, and I’ve been unable to finish it. I started with one idea that turned into a circle—A leads to B leads back to A—which can create something neat and cohesive, but in this case, I wasn’t sure where to begin the thread.
I tried to tie my ideas into a neat, linear piece, yet I ended up with something more like a web. My self-imposed mid-month deadline came and went. I can just about imagine what it would take to turn what I wrote into a coherent letter, but I’m no longer certain that what I wanted to say is worth it.
I hope I can eventually take the tangled remains of that letter and weave them into something good. For now, I surrender.
I’m aware there’s a book called The War of Art by an author named Steven Pressfield. I have not read it, but the title phrase has come to mind frequently in the last few months.
The fact that creating something often feels like a fight baffles me, and it annoys me. I know people who are trying to raise babies while sleep-deprived and people fighting through significant health issues. I’ve had to fight migraines and other things myself. Art is supposed to be fun, and relieve stress, and provide a nice creative outlet.
Why does art sometimes feel like a fight?
I don’t really know, but it happens, and it’s well documented among artists, including writers.
Pressfield calls this concept “Resistance” (yes, with a capital R) in the book.
In my first Substack letter, January 2023, I talked about the struggle to create good work. At that time, I said I was experimenting with a creative “algorithm” that would help me complete work:
Make it real, meaning “make it authentic” and “make it exist outside my brain”.
Make it good. This is not about trying for perfection, but for excellence, in both quality and message.
Make it done. Time to wrap up the project and move forward to the next one.
And I mentioned that fear of failure is a huge hurdle in that process.
Fear of failure is, indeed, one part of the problem, and part of Pressfield’s concept of Resistance.
And it’s so wildly, absurdly counterproductive. I’ve run into this as a piano student. One mistake turns into a battle between the voices in my own mind, directing all that mental power away from the task I’m trying to accomplish.
My piano teacher directed me to read The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey (which you may remember from my July 2023 letter); it helped because, like tennis, piano playing is largely a physical task with a mental component. I’m not composing new songs, here. Most of the mental component is learning to turn off the language brain.
Writing feels like the opposite. I’m trying to communicate an idea. Is the idea worth communicating? Will the people reading it understand? I can’t abandon those questions if I want to write something worthwhile.
But in the “Make it real” step of my experimental creative process, those questions could be more of a problem than a help. I’m still trying to find the idea at that stage. I started writing last month’s letter with just a vague direction—“What does it mean to be home?”—and I ended up pleasantly surprised with where I landed.
I think for my original draft for this month’s letter, I started into “Make it good” too early. Like trying to bake an under-proofed sourdough loaf. There’s a whole bunch of stuff you have to do to sourdough before it’s ready to pop into the oven, and a bunch of waiting while it rises; there’s a correct order to things if you want to end up with delightful bread.
Or, as author Jonathan Rogers put it so helpfully in his Substack The Habit Weekly earlier this month,
“You can wrestle around with the inner critic at the beginning, staring at yawning blankness until a good sentence comes to you, then staring at the next five inches of blankness until another good sentence comes to you, or you can tell the inner critic just to wait a minute while you revel in the freedom to crank out prose that might be terrible or might be brilliant; it’s not your job to determine the quality of the work while you’re writing. You can figure that out later, after you’ve invited the inner critic back into the room (and please, please don’t neglect to invite the inner critic back into the room).”
-Jonathan Rogers, “Make Friends with the Inner Critic”, The Habit Weekly, 12 March 2024
For anybody struggling through the writing process, that whole post is worth a read.
But writing is endlessly forgiving, infinitely editable, especially in the age of computers. There’s not even a trashcan full of lousy drafts, nor the risk of running out of ink or paper.
I came back to the phrase “the war of art” earlier this year not because of my writing, but because I took a pottery class in January and February. I took a similar class about five years ago at the same studio, and my brain still remembered a few things this round.
Pottery’s not my normal hobby for multiple reasons, including that it’s expensive and inconvenient.
What I did not remember from 2019 is that it can also be psychologically taxing, as every single step of the process of making a piece can ruin it. I think good potters, or potters who have done it for a while, can truly let things be what they are and not get attached to a piece.
I could almost accept the problems that were my fault, mistakes I made. Yet a few times, something happened that I never had control over.
I found myself recalling the so-called “serenity prayer”: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
The famous prayer, attributed to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, is probably a good approach to throwing, building, firing, and glazing clay.
I usually imagine throwing darts at that prayer. I prefer this one: “God, change the things I want to change, and keep everything else the same.”
The original prayer also seems to exclude situations that God could change, where instead of plain acceptance I ought also to pray. Maybe I’ll add, “Grant me the faith to pray for what You may change, and to accept Your will if You do not change it.”
I keep returning to the original version of the prayer, though, especially “the wisdom to know the difference.”
For pottery, maybe I realize I actually can fix a wonky bowl while it’s on the wheel.
Maybe I can change a messed-up piece to become something good, but not to become what I had imagined originally.
Or maybe I accept that I cannot save it, but I can use what I learned to make something new.
Writing doesn’t risk heartbreaking kiln fiascos, but I see similarities after all—the piece I can edit and rewrite until it’s better, the piece that goes differently than I’d imagined but still turns out good, and the piece that’s actually trash, usually because the premise upon which it’s based was a fragile foundation.
I could also use the wisdom to know when it’s okay to walk away from the computer for a while versus when I’m running away because I don’t want to face the thing I was stuck on.
So here’s my serenity prayer for a writer: “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept when I literally cannot write due to health issues or higher priorities. Grant me the courage, inspiration, and focus to do the work when I am able to write. And bless me with the wisdom to know the difference.”
Writing Updates
I was sick for about a week and am behind where I’d like to be on writing. I did complete a guest blog post that I was hired to write for a friend’s website, and I’m looking forward to sharing the link when it’s posted.
That’s it for this March! If any of this was valuable to you—interesting, useful, or beautiful—share it with someone:
To truth, love, and adventure,
Rae
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