Barbara: In the last post we described writer’s block as involving deep, personal internal tensions. On the one hand, there has to be a great need to express something in words on the page; writing is hard, and you can easily just not do it. On the other hand, conflicting dynamics must be powerful enough to entirely shut down (at least for some substantial period of time) your ability to continue the project you are driven to undertake.
So today let’s talk about the first part of this “equation,” the drive to write. It may be obvious, but it’s still worth saying. You can’t have writer’s block without a drive to write.
Elizabeth: We’re thinking now about people who feel their lives are incomplete if they don’t write, those for whom writing is consequential, essential, or, for some, a large part of their identity.
Barbara: Do you know the quotation from David Baldacci, the author of the novel Absolute Power? “If writing were illegal, I’d be in prison. I can’t not write.” And James Baldwin, in a 1984 interview, said that a story is “something that irritates you and won’t let you go. That’s the anguish of it. Do this book, or die.”
Elizabeth: Right. It might be a story that you have to tell, or a deep dilemma, or perhaps a transcendent experience that is a mystery to you. In the last episode of the TV series, The New Look, the fashion designer Christian Dior attributes his drive to create gorgeous clothing for women to a single transcendent experience in his youth — a vision of his beloved sister in his mother’s beautiful garden, a lost Eden. For his entire life, he sought to bring that rapturous memory back to life through his work.
And Guillermo Del Toro, the Mexican filmmaker, when asked how his films manage to be so different from one another, answered, “They’re all about my father!” All of his work reflects this underlying, central preoccupation.
Barbara: Your examples are of visual artists. Let me add one more…the installation artist, Robert Irwin. At a talk I attended, he said that as a child he’d never been to a museum but always wanted to be an artist. Puzzled, I went up afterwards to ask about this. Irwin explained that he wanted to capture moments of seeing things a certain way.
“You wanted to capture your experience for others,” I offered.
“No,” he countered, putting his hands on my shoulders and locking eyes with me. “I wanted to capture it for myself!”
I think this is really, really crucial. Artists are creating for themselves...either working out something within, or driven to tell a story, or recreating an experience from the past…
Perhaps there are real differences in this arena between visual artists and writers. Maybe writers are trying more to figure things out or to solve problems…What do you think? Maybe it depends on the kind of writing.
Elizabeth: I’m not sure. Joan Didion famously commented that she wrote to know what she thought. And she also said that in her novels she wrote about things she feared, in order to keep them from happening to her.
I can only really say what the drive is for me. I’m conscious of at least three different motivations. In contrast to what Irwin said to you, I’m very aware of the reader and of intensely wanting to be “heard.” This was the most obvious goal of my book — which cries out, “Let me speak!” But another very big motive for me is to understand what’s going on within me and in those around me. And, then, there’s the yearning to turn that understanding into words on the page—which feels like concrete evidence that I’m alive. It lets me experience my aliveness. I know this sounds stupid!
Barbara: Speaking as a psychiatrist now, the fact that you feel that what you said is “stupid” and that you kind of giggled saying it…is a marker that this thought of yours is really important. Just think of the complicated feelings that were aroused when you spoke those words. You got to something that was primitive…and by primitive I mean “deep,” profound, basic…at the level of survival…and not at all cerebral.
Elizabeth: Perhaps what I said wasn’t quite right. Maybe this is the most accurate: I felt my mother didn’t see me but rather saw some projection of herself when we were together. So when I write and make something from my thoughts, I feel I’m making myself visible, in an existential way: this is who I am.
My mother’s criticisms were telling me who she thought I was. “You’re such a slob.” “You’re such a doormat.” So, giving form to what I think is a way of pushing back against that and of asserting a different identity for myself.
Barbara: But part of you has to wonder whether she was right. After years of hearing such things…from a parent…it has to get under your skin. Inner self-doubt is a really under-recognized phenomenon…and it paralyzes people.
Elizabeth: Well, it did paralyze me for a very long while. I can’t eradicate the effect she had on me. It’s like a scar. But I can create evidence on the positive side. Writing is a way of asserting that I’m not who my mother said I was.
Barbara: So…You’re saying that you’re creating a positive experience for yourself every time you write. It’s inherent in the process itself and separate from the content. You are declaring the proof of your existence as you.
Many writers feel that writing gives them a purpose in life that goes beyond the present…an existence that extends into the future. We all live with the questions, “What’s it all about? What’s it all for? Writing can be the answer for some.
So, just using you as an example…writers have complicated, multi-faceted motivations for writing, and these are not trivial. The drive to write is deep and powerful.
Elizabeth: And when it’s blocked, it’s by something even more powerful.
Barbara: I want to add one more thing. And this puts a fly in the ointment, so to speak. We humans have very limited insight, especially about our own motives. I think writers (and others) are aware of certain aspects of their experience of creating and some of their intentions. But motivation is multi-dimensional as well as deep. And, the source of ideas, stories, images are generally non-conscious. Perhaps we can discuss this topic at length sometime in the future…
At the bottom of creativity there is the mystery of the brain’s activity, serving up to some individuals the drive to write. And if you build a life and identity around that…and then you run into a block!! Oh my!
I’m so glad that you shared what you shared! It’s very heartening and encourages me to keep going, to keep mustering the courage to come out of hiding. And I’m so, so glad to hear that you’ve freed yourself from that very difficult place. I’m in the thick of it and lately I’ve been joking to my friends that I thought I was going to turn into a butterfly, but I think, instead, that I will be turning into a phoenix and rise from the ashes. That’s what it’s feeling like, anyway!
Elizabeth, I very much relate to all the motivations you described. Years ago, I said to a visiting artist (I’m a ceramic artist), “I feel like an amoeba.” What an odd thing to say to anyone, much less to a stranger whom you admire! I often remember that embarrassing moment of honesty because it so perfectly represents what Barbara described as primitive and at the level of survival—my yearning to be seen and to even exist! It rose up, unbidden (well, not by my head) to express itself with words that were painfully revealing. I do feel driven to write and to create, despite massive inner resistance and constant self-critiquing. There’s something inside me that must claim this victory, must declare, “I Am!” and it feels like i’m creating myself from the ground up.