Here's the thing. I'm writing my book (about creative mothers), and I'm really pleased with it, with how it's taking shape. It is nowhere near finished, but I am please with how it is forming. I have tried to explain to non-writers how it works - it is a two fold process - partly it feels like you are groping in the dark, trying to find the form which is already there. It exists, but I have to reach it. And partly it is totally up to me to channel the sparks of inspiration that come to me to be born. It is a completely different experience to writing a blog, an article or dissertation.
I have started books before and abandoned them way before this stage. So I am really pleased. I am moving at a good pace, and it feels good, it is a challenge, but at the right level, I feel I have the experience, the ideas, the voice...
I know people are enjoying the blog. I know I can sell my articles. I know they like my style and that my subject matter touches a chord with many...
And yet...
The absolutely terror and embarrassment of showing my work, my baby. It is like walking in a shopping mall with no clothes on. I feel very vulnerable.
I am proud of it... and yet I am terrified.
I keep telling my husband not to look - I am a book virgin - please be gentle! Good friends are allowed to touch it, to attest its reality, so I can share my excitement. But not a word can be read...
How crazy is this?
I'm writing a book... which is going to be read...
But I don't want anyone to read it, well at least not anyone who knows me. Every word makes me cringe - it is too real, it is my deepest thoughts, my motivations, my ways of functioning laid bare on a plate. I don't want people to read it and cringe inwardly and say nice things. I want it to work for my readers, for it to change lives, to inspire, to be of interest, to set lightbulbs off... but I don't want anyone to read it...
Go figure!
chuckle, it's so much easier to have strangers read. it's very similar to my blogs - when the husband reads (like when i suggest a particular post) i still feel very odd about it.
ReplyDeleterelated to your book subject....
i find it many times easier to do some art than to work on my own book. i've put that baby on a backburner until little Miss is older. i just find i need different conditions for writing - lots of mental space, silence....
If you don't want to be naked in the literary sense, maybe you could leave a literary fig-leaf for your modesty and pose artfully and creatively so as to show and reveal only as much as you want....
ReplyDeleteHa! Ha! Ha! I totally get it!
ReplyDeleteThat is the blogger's dilemma. I love the comments, but cringe at anyone actually, you know, reading my words-especially if their attributable to me and not ghostwritten for someone else or anonymous.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, I think you're completely stuffed full of talent. Write on! We'll read it (but pretend not to if it makes you uncomfortable ;)
thank you ladies - I appreciate the writerly empathy!
ReplyDeleteHey MF, you know what, it's actually not naked, naked like reveal all, it is less "revealing" about me personally than this blog, but still it's... I don't know - it's the deeper sharing of my understanding of spirituality and creativity which I usually keep private, like even from my husband because... I guess I feel awkward about them, bashful - why I don't know but I guess because they are things I have learnt for myself, that I have created and developed myself they just feel especially vulnerable - it is my "thing" which always holds me back... my soft spot - it is not the writing of it, but the sharing of it... oh botheration! didn't anticipate this one! No idea why cos it's not new...
It's true Lucy, if it's true for you then it's true and there is nothing anyone can say or do (whether they know you or not) who can take away what is to you truth! believe in it and yourself. much love x x
ReplyDeleteThank you Laura - you're thee best - come and live in my head please!! Must make plans -we're on hols now - thinking perhaps we could coincide at Kinsale arts week family day?
ReplyDeleteJust found this from Ms V Woolf - so it happens to the best of us!
ReplyDeleteIt is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.
- Virginia Woolf