http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NMOYE8A
Writers, we are a strange bunch. I used to think it was just me, but I'm beginning to realise I belong to a large club. I'm going to digress for a while but bear with me, I'll come back to that topic shortly.
When I first came to Egypt I met a woman from Australia who has lived here for about 14 years I think and was going back to Australia in a weeks time. Before the internet and social media we may have kept up a sporadic form of contact via letters and maybe not. But of course with social media geographical distance means very little. We chat occasionally, I find we have quite a bit in common and I hope she will become a good friend. She sent me a link to an article which brings me back to my topic of writers. There is a secondary topic to this article but I'm not going into that one here as you'll get sick of reading if I go on for too long :)
This article was putting forward the theory that writers procrastinate because of a fear of failure and eventually produce because the fear of producing nothing over-rides the fear of failure. This is exactly right for me, so I read on. The idea behind the theory is that the writers are the ones for whom English (or whatever your native language is) at school was so easy zero study was necessary. The long term result of this ease however is that those people come to believe that failure means you can't do it. People who have to struggle - who fail, try again, learn something and pass - have a different mindset. These people learn that if you fail it is simply a learning opportunity.
So writers, because of this ease at school, believe that if they fail they are no good as writers and should give up. They feel that you either can or you can't. This leads to procrastination or self destructive behaviour. Better to not do it at all, or to make it impossible to do it well, than to give it all you have and fail. I'll take it one step further - if school was an easy experience the student never learns how to study, how to try and try again. So when it becomes hard said student has no idea how to adapt and to study and try and fail and try again. Failure to this student means give up because you can't do it. But to the student who has had to struggle for every achievement, failure means you did it wrong so have another go and you'll eventually get it right.
This is so very true I believe. Certainly for me I am deathly afraid that I don't have what it takes as a writer. I had put it down to writer's ego - creating any sort of art whether it be writing, painting, sculpture or any sort of artistic endeavour means that part of the creator is put into the end result. If the piece of art is rejected the artist feels personally rejected also. It's not 'why don't you like my art', it's 'why don't you like ME'. So writers are fragile creatures in a fiercely competitive environment.
But I did have it easy at school. My idea of study was to flip through the text book the morning of the exam. And for English? Well I was always happy the day of the English exam, it meant finish early and have free time. Actually I quite liked the Geography and History exams too - they always had an essay question at the end that was worth half the marks. I was brilliant at writing an essay based on very little actual knowledge and making it sound like I knew far more than I did. Those essay questions got me through. Maths - well no essay questions in maths sadly...
So, English lessons. To be completely honest I have never been able to understand why it is so hard for some people to learn grammar, syntax and sentence structure in their native language. I mean, you talk it, why can't you write it? It took me years to understand that talking and writing are not the same, and that it is reading that bridges the gap.
In year 6 when I was 11 my teacher was not correcting me on grammar, syntax or sentence structure. She was telling me that with my huge vocabulary I should not be relying on clichés as descriptions but using my imagination. Cut the clichés was what she was telling me. The difference between 'whether' and 'weather' was what she was telling the rest of the class.
I was brought up in a small town, and went to a very small school. We had roughly 300 students in the entire school. The town at that time did not have a library and the school library was very small. I read everything in the primary students section well before year 5. So in year 5 I borrowed 'The Swiss Family Robinson'. Well, that was a decision that had unforeseen repercussions.
I was the introverted child who did her very best to be invisible - not easy in a tiny school but mostly I managed it. So imagine my horror at being called up in front of the teacher/librarian, my class teacher and the principal. And why? They wanted to know why had I borrowed 'The Swiss Family Robinson'. I was baffled, was there something wrong with doing that? So I told them I borrowed it to read it. My Principal told me I should be reading the books for my year level. I said very politely that I had already read them, some of them more than once.
The teacher/librarian said that I must not have been able to read this book because I brought it back in less than a week. Again I was puzzled, wondering if there was something wrong with bringing it back so early and why would I return a book if I hadn't finished it? My opinion of persons in a position of authority was beginning to sink. But I was brought up to be polite so I replied that I brought it back because I had finished it. The teacher/librarian was incredulous and didn't bother to hide it. She said a ten year old couldn't possibly have read it at all, let alone in that short space of time.
I was beginning to seriously reconsider my opinion of persons in authority by then but as a good girl I just said again that I brought it back because I had finished it. I was wondering what it was about this book that had caused so much angst among my teachers, it certainly hadn't seemed that controversial when I read it. Finally my class teacher said that if I had read it then I should be able to tell them what it was about.
A book report! Finally something about this whole bizarre meeting I could understand. So I gave them a book report, one that would have earned me an A because I had enjoyed the book and was only too happy to share that with these people. When I finished there was silence, an approving smile from my class teacher, a just eaten a lemon expression from the teacher/librarian and from the principal? He just said to me that I could read any book in the library I wished to. I was pretty happy about that because it opened up the high school section to me. And when I borrowed 'Gone With The Wind' in year 7 and returned it in less than a week not a word was said.
Going back further to year 1 when I started school. I was so excited to start school because I was going to learn to read. I was convinced that learning to read must be like doing magic. My parents read to me every night, I used to look at my books all the time and pretend I was reading them. My father had told me that I had a good memory because I would correct him if he missed a word or a sentence in one of my books (poor man must have got sick of reading the same books every night). So learning to read to me meant being able to read my books whenever I wanted to. I was so very excited that first day.
But we didn't learn to read the first day and I was pretty annoyed about it. Then, when finally we were given our first readers I was almost afraid to open mine, I was so anxious that maybe I wouldn't be able to learn. So you can imagine how disappointed I was when the reading lessons started and I found out that reading was what I had been doing all along. It wasn't magic at all, I could already read. But then we were taken to the library - to this small girl who had never seen a library before it was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen.
So yes, English was absurdly easy for me at school. I didn't ever come anywhere near failure. I was a big fish in a small pond to use one of those despised clichés. And now, to use another one, I'm a small fish in the huge ocean of Amazon and yes I am afraid of failure. Writing is what I do, it is what defines me and drives me. If I can't make a success of it I don't know what to do. And I do have a self destructive streak and a stupendous talent for procrastination. I did believe that if I failed it meant I was no good. Now, because of this article, I'm going to try to change my thinking. Failure is not a death sentence to a career, it's an opportunity to learn and to grow. (But don't let me fail, buy my books!)
As I follow my dream and I write every day (or almost every day) I feel so much more comfortable inside my own skin. I know the events of my childhood had a huge impact on me and damaged me in ways I may never fully understand. But also, repressing my drive to write has had its own effect on me. I have always been the square peg trying to force myself into the round hole. I have always wanted to write, it's all I ever wanted to do (Well be a vet too but you know - maths and science requirements and the creative brain bamboozled by these subjects). It's taken me far too long to get to this point of really trying to make a go of this.
You can have no idea how justified I am feeling right now to see this wee little book (that I wrote in less than one day) sitting up there in those Amazon lists. Yes it's free right now and maybe it won't sell once people have to pay .99c for it. But they're downloading it for free, my ranking has gone up even as I am writing this. That surely must mean something. I'm hoping it means they like it and yes I can actually write :)
It's a good book, read it :)
No comments:
Post a Comment