From Kate’s Writing Crate…
When I
see actors being interviewed on TV, they often talk about looking for and
accepting roles that scare them. They want the challenge to dig deep and make
it work even if they might fail. However, if they are being interviewed about
“scary” roles, it’s because they successfully met the challenge.
For most
of us, everything about writing is scary:
Facing
a blank page;
Searching
for ideas;
Struggling
for just the rights words; and
Feeling
stupid or self-indulgent as well as exposed.
On this
year’s Emmy broadcast, Jane Anderson was the winner of the Limited Series or
Movie Writing Award for her Olive
Kitteridge script. In her acceptance speech she said, “First let me just
acknowledge all my fellow writers out there who were nominated tonight. We all
face that horrible, horrible blank
page. And we’re here and we solved our scripts and isn’t that remarkable!”
It is
remarkable that we write in the face of all the scary obstacles, but, if we are
brave, we learn to write in spite of them. We know there are rewards—a phrase
or sentence that entrances , a piece we are proud of, or as Ellen Gilchrist
describes it on page 68 of her book, The
Writing Life:
“…Because it feels good. The
brain is easily addicted to feeling good and nothing on earth, with the
exception of great sex, feels as good as having written well and truly in the
morning. Actually it is better than sex because you control the whole activity
and the afterglow can last for years if the work is published and other people
profit from it. The lasting pleasure is not in their praise but in your
knowledge that you have contributed something of value to the culture from
which you derive your being.”
Be brave. Write. Dig deep and make it work. Contribute something of value
to the culture. Make your mark. That’s why we are
here.
If we write, we may or may not end up
being interviewed on TV or winning an Emmy. The rewards from our work will remain unknown unless we overcome the scary challenges
of writing.
