Man Up

More than talent, more than ability, more than skill, what a writer needs is courage.

Courage.

Matisse said something similar, "Creativity requires courage."

Finding courage and fighting resistance is now a major industry. There are libraries of books and armies of gurus, therapists, and other self-described experts with portfolios bulging with conferences, 12-step programs, and all other media available to help the artist to face the page, face the fear, break the wall, to push on even when you despise the results or when the muses abandon you, courage to present something you're not sure of, to push into new frontiers, or more importantly, especially when you aren't pushing into new frontiers. Courage not to hide. Courage to tell your stories, to reveal your history, to use the most authentic material at hand though it may be coworkers, friends, and family. Accountants, managers, associates, lawyers, doctors, etc may hide in their work, may claim it is just their job. An artist cannot.

Popular marketer and blogger Seth Godin defines art as 1) made by human being, 2) created to have an impact, to change someone else, and 3) is a gift. You can sell the souvenir, the canvas, the recording... but the idea itself is free, and the generosity is a critical part of making art. Most art has nothing to do with oil paint of marble. Art is what we're doing when we do our best work.

Art is what we're doing when we do our best work.

That's to say art work is artwork, but it's work and that's the creator's job. It's a process of stages, a work in progress: First with the heart, then with the head. But first, get it down. The first draft, the thumbnail, the first take, should always be authored by the heart. (I cribbed a bit from Finding Forrester there.)

Art work does not necessarily produce the artwork, but it is a spiritual exercise.

So now, go exercise.

Flannery O'Connor on Writing

Image by Jesse Hamm


In this excerpt, from from Mystery and Manners—a collection of O'Connor's unpublished essays and lectures—the writer is specifically addressing novelists with "Christian concerns" though the application is universal. This is from the essay The Fiction Writer & His Country (1957). Says she:

The novelist...will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When yo can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.

Unless we are willing to accept our artists as they are, the answer to the question, "Who speaks for America today?" will have to be: The advertising agencies.

Later, she quotes St. Cyril of Jerusalem:

The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.
The creative field is not a place where safety and innovation go together. Fear is something we should push up against in order to stay fresh.