Anything but Zen--in the Art of Writing

“How long has it been since you wrote a story where your real love or your real hatred somehow got onto the paper? When was the last time you dared release a cherished prejudice so it slammed the page like a lightning bolt? What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them?” —Ray Bradbury

Consider this post my shout.

One of my favorite authors is Ray Bradbury, an author who has made his appearances on the blog before. Most people write him off as the author of that book, Fahrenheit 451, that everyone reads in grade school for their Summer Reading list or English class. Especially in our contemporary day and age, I encourage you to read—or reread—it. Bradbury paints a horrific dystopia of people not reading, being sucked up in private, screened, walled-off worlds and losing their ability to think, feel, and be human. It bears tremendous resemblance to the world we currently live in with social media, Bluetooth headphones, and an abundance of digital screens—big and small—with nonstop entertainment-distraction to prevent you from seeing and being in the world.

Plug for Fahrenheit 451 and any other magical, poignant, chilling, and brilliant works of fiction aside, I was fortunate to stumble on Bradbury’s nonfiction collection of essays called ‘Zen in the Art of Writing.’

A few weeks ago, writer’s blocked and frustrated with work, I read the opening words of the first essay, ‘The Joy of Writing’ in this book and choked: “Zest. Gusto. How rarely we hear these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or, for that matter, creating by them?”

I almost cried. It wasn’t a new dawning moment that I wasn’t living or creating with zest or gusto—Bradbury just articulated the thing I knew to be true elegantly, passionately, and painfully. And better than I could have said it myself—but hey, he’s the professional and I’m the dilettante.

I continued reading. “If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don’t even know yourself.” This was still true. Every writing goal I’ve had in the last two years has been about finding “product-market fit” for the stories I want to tell or hoping that I can check some niche, literary boxes and get suddenly discovered. Worse than leading to bad writing or living as half a writer. It leads to not writing at all. Not to mention the man had found me out—I’m not sure who I am anymore.

My eyes scrolled down the page, hoping for some antidote for my half-living, lost, desperate state. I marveled that some literary doctor who’s never met me has managed to diagnose my illness within 5 paragraphs.

It was there in the form of a question: “What do you love more than anything else in the world? What do you love, or what do you hate?”

Lately, I’ve found it hard to pin down what I love. All the things and people I love are muted with COVID. So I’m stuck leaning into what I hate. Usually I don’t indulge this kind of thinking because it feels counterproductive, but at this point, I’m so tired of worrying about what’s proper, appropriate, and acceptable, that I want to lean into the hateful impulse. I’d rather let the most destructive words of which I’m capable fly out and then edit them down into something measured, something palatable, something less irrational.

But right now the whole point is that everything good about my writing—my personal writing, that is—has been castrated. The overthinking and strategizing have left me with scattered noteboooks of half-thoughts and nothing to show for it all.

So, writing like some irrational, petulant teenager, here is the list of everything I am hating right now:

I hate that, for the last 6 years, I have had an unshakable desire to be known for my writing and have done nothing to pour gasoline and strike a match on that desire. I’ve been slow, consistent, and careful, posting at least once a month on my blog—but it’s not enough and I know it. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity. I hate being insane about this.

I see classmates of mine from college getting written up in the New York Times for their literary work and being showcased as editors on eminent digital publications. I see peers from graduate school and previous jobs beginning companies and writing books and being featured on panels and podcasts. I hate that I am not among these creatives who have ostensibly ‘made it’ or, at minimum are ‘making’ even if not ‘making it.’ I hate that I haven’t been putting in the time to be among them and therefore have no reason to complain about not being among them.

I want to be known and respected for my writing well outside of the network of people who know me. I hate how I haven’t done enough revision or work on my writing to get it to a place where it is known. I hate how I can’t put aside my distaste toward self-promotion, even as it’s a necessary thing to get others to discover my work. I hate how scared I have been to put my creative work out there and let it be rejected, or worse, ignored.

I hate how I could easily advise someone else in my position who is struggling with my very problem, and probably coach them through it, give them advice, and edit their work, and lead them to success—but when it comes to taking my own advice, I am paralyzed.

I hate how I know what I need to do and have not brought myself to do it—to seek out an editor or agent, go on Twitter (my absolute least favorite social media platform) and start pitching, entering more contests, getting rejected left and right, or, failing that, cutting all my blog work as distraction and noise and focusing unequivocally on a first draft that has me jumping out of my skin with excitement, sense of purpose, and joy.

I hate how fickle inspiration is and how every good idea that strikes me never comes at a time when I can lean into it, full-force, and explore it for hours on end. I hate how, when I have the time to sit with an idea, the moment of inspiration passes and can’t be recovered by sitting for hours at the desk, trying to claw back at the magic of the idea in its golden moment of inception.

I hate how much I care to be liked by other people and how that desire to be liked gets in the way of doing ballsy, strong-willed, brutal, polarizing, and therefore more authentic work. I hate how the way I speak, alone, in my room, or impassioned, in the company of friends, is not making its way onto the page. Phone calls or other more fluid forms of communication are great for me because I can’t be scripted. I hate that I can’t capture that flair and spontaneity naturally in my writing right now.

I hate how I will over-analyze everything—even the most basic of communications with friends via text message or email—and spend hours on the simplest text response.

I hate indecisive people. I hate how I have become an indecisive person in so many parts of my life. I hate how writing another area where the indecision manifests worse and worse. What word I use, where I place the sentence, how I structure the narrative—it’s a hamster wheel of effort, moving in circles, going nowhere. I hate how sometimes I can’t even string together a conversation because of the overwhelming overthinking and desire to be liked.

I hate what working in technology and corporate America has done to me. It’s made me grow up and lose my wonder. It’s replaced my soul with biting self-criticism, editing, and a constant eye towards managing optics and perception and organizational politics at global scale. It has atrophied my spirit while stealing my best thinking and words for the purposes of slack chats, emails, and status decks that no one reads or remembers. I hate that I am good enough at what I do and that I like the money and lifestyle it affords me.

I hate that I’m a control freak—and am paid to be one for a living as a project manager. I hate how the thing that makes me an effective project manager is the thing that thing that keeps me from writing more and writing more often—this constant tic towards evaluating and re-evaluating plans and trying to optimize an outcome while making others around me feel safe, appreciated, heard, and comfortable.

I hate how I spent 4 pages on an out of office plan for 3 days off. I hate that my manager never opened the plan, which was meticulously crafted and formatted. I hate that technology never switches off. I hate that I never switch off.

I hate that I don’t know what I want in my career anymore—how I could talk myself into anything remotely legitimately conceivable based on my background, but how there’s nothing tugging at my heartstrings. I hate how I go from fired up at best to aggressively apathetic at worst on the thing that eats up most of my waking hours and then some.

I hate how in the end, this all may come down to me being hard on myself and advice from others to be kinder and gentler and softer to myself. I hate that advice—if I were to take that advice of kindness and gentleness, I think I would never pick up a pen again, never blog again, and something about that doesn’t sit right with me. I hate that part of me thinks I should stop fighting this and give up. I hate how intensely I will feel hatred, anger, sadness, frustration, anxiety, and depression—and fail to capture them at the moment they strike. Instead of indulging their depths and their drama, I wait for them to pass, and, when attempting to write about them, they are rendered toothless.

I hate living as good girl, the one always so disciplined and in control of herself. I’m suffocated by self-repression. I would love to feel free enough to lose my shit, to be mean and angry and vindictive and get a pass for it for a change instead of living up to the person I’m supposed to be and that people believe I am.

I hate the irony that despite my last name, I am still the least Zen person I know.

I hate how the most zest or gusto I’ve exhibited in my writing is from this perspective of writing about things that I hate. But most of all, I hate how this is the most honest I’ve been—to a reader or to myself—in a long time.

Concluding the essay, Bradbury elaborates, “Thomas Wolfe ate the world and vomited lava. Dickens dined at a different table every hour of his life. Moliere, tasting society, turned to pick up his scalpel, as did Pope and Shaw. Everywhere you look in the literary cosmos, the great ones are busy loving and hating.”

“Vomiting lava.” What a thought. Right now, I am more so spitting venom but maybe one day I could vomit lava. At the very least, I am busy hating. That’s more than half the writer I was before this post began.

Maybe one day, I could write again from a place of love and be magnetic for it. But for now, for the end of September, I’d rather be self-indulgently hateful and honest and continuing to try the essay-medicines from the Good Doctor that is my favorite author.