Pre-writer writing: lessons learned
I started as an actor, and I was pretty good--but never really got the hang of selling myself. I'd go to auditions and, to counter my hatred for the self-promoting freaks around me, I'd feel like I had to apologize for being there. I'm not a naturally gregarious person, but I'm friendly, and I like a good laugh. But instead of being that guy, I'd walk into auditions timidly, sheepishly. And the problem is, shy people are often accused of being anti-social or, worse, snobs. When we think of people we're attracted to, it's often the confidence that attracts us. (True, many of us like shy people, but only after being reminded of it by someone excessively cute and shy . . . or snobby. It's so hard to tell.)
Anyway, I rarely got gigs. Part of that was living where I do, but part of it was that I walked into auditions and acted so incredibly fragile that probably directors thought "well, maybe he's decent, but one note wold reduce him to dust." (Strangely, when I walked into auditions and did really angry pieces, I'd usually book the job.)
Since I gave up acting as a career goal, I haven't done much of it. But when I do do it now, I feel incredibly free. I don't have to pretend to be anything. I just step up to the plate, wait for the pitch, and generally hit a double, if not a home run. All the pressure got taken away. I'm not trying to book a gig anymore. I don't care if nobody ever asks me to act again. And, sans that pressure, I feel great. And normally I impress people. And the irony is that with that attitude, I probably could get some decent work if I really tried to.
(I realized this all partly because I've grown up a lot, but partly because I read Renee Fleming's book a few years ago--which is about singing, but anyone who does creative work that involves selling it or auditioning for it should read it. You can find it here.)
I gave up acting, and focused on writing. And the second I did that, I started constricting my writing ability.
I think most of us have the natural ability to tell stories. Humans have done it since the beginning of time, and we do it when we're kids around campfires without ever once taking a class in it. We listen to stories, we steal shit, we re-tell them. That's what writers do, except they think a lot about it... and pay for degrees in it.
Well, when I started taking writing seriously, I handed all that instinct over and decided I didn't know anything about it. I didn't know about plot structure, or set-ups and pay-offs, or any of that shit. Up to that point, I just wrote. I didn't take it seriously, I mostly wrote plays for me to maybe act in one day. But when I started writing for writing's sake, I started writing to impress people.
And I panicked. The muscles froze. Then I had a play produced, and spent the whole time being miserable because I was a bad writer co-opting other writers' genius, and I re-wrote and re-wrote and re-wrote and made a big hot mess out of the whole thing.
Only recently have I started to take the lesson I learned from acting and apply it to my writing. And it's paying off--slowly. Next month, I'll have a piece in Hippocampus Magazine, and I have a couple more in the fire, too. That lesson is, in essence, to be free, to give up, to just write as I did before I was a writer; to enjoy it; to make a mess. To get my hands dirty. And to not try to impress anybody. We tell stories as part of our every day life, so it doesn't need to be over-thought. College has been good for me as an adult, because I've gained confidences; but I don't think we need BAs in writing to do it. We already know how. We just need to sit down and make it happen, like a kid in a sandbox. I think, maybe, that's the key to success in life. It'd be nice if we didn't lose that with age, but I'm getting the sense maybe we can reclaim it.
As long as we don't over-think it.