Writing the Perfect Beast #12
Silencing the Inner Critic and Benchmarking Reality…
I have decided to talk honestly about the business of how I write poetry. There are people who teach how to create poetry, how to format it, how to submit and how publishing in general works. I am not seeing that many people doing work on what you need to do with your brain and mental attitudes to make that stick, grow and then evolve. This is me, flailing along in Real Time. HI THERE.
Last week was significant for me, for many reasons. It marked a validation of both ability and approach, and has granted an unexpected reminder from the Universe that if you work hard enough, do the hours and apply for everything, however ridiculously low you consider your chances of success to be, occasionally you will get a swing at something very special indeed.
However, I want to talk about last night’s Zoom Open Mic this morning, because it highlighted for me something that I feel is important to dissect. I read with a group of people whose work was, in nearly all cases, vastly different to my own. My anxiety was back to COVID Zoom Room levels, and when the event was done, I found myself questioning the validity of my work.
How do you keep faith in your own ability to write authentically?
I picked something for last night that’s not won anything, that’s not been published or indeed is very old at all. It was written yesterday, as it happens, so raw that there was a very distinct crunch to it, and this morning I accept that this may not have been the sensible approach in a room of poets I don’t really know. The comments I got in chat however were very encouraging.
The rest of the poetry was accomplished, polished, well-considered and in many cases award-nominated. If I had picked work that had been previously accepted for publication, would it have been a less-anxious ride? Possibly, but I’m currently not thinking about the stuff that’s proven to be successful. I took a punt at the Exhibition last week with a shape poem and was blown away by the reaction.
I suspect last night it was my fear of the unknown that was the real issue.
After decades of being gaslit in professional situations, it is very hard to believe in unfamiliar surroundings that what I am told is objective. There, I wrote it down and so that fear has now not only been realised but addressed. It is massively important as adults to be honest with ourselves when it comes to the things that can prevent us from making progress, but also to accept that some obstacles are moveable by us.
I could have made this easier last night and ‘gone safe’ with the work. Reading first is always a bit of a trauma, regardless of your set list. I could have been far kinder on myself and not led with the last thing I’d written, but the poster brief told me I could bring rough diamonds or well-polished gems, and the point of open mics for me has always been to see how new work sounds ‘in public’.
It is possible to shift the negatives into positives if you can find objectivity.
This morning is also the reminder that focusing on the people who don’t offer an opinion on your work is a mug’s game. Not everyone is going to enjoy what you write, it’s just an inescapable fact. Being liked as a person, at least for me, is secondary to having work treated fairly, and the reality of the creative industry is that this has never been a universal constant. So, you have to find a compromise.
I try very hard not to ignore work, too: although poetry is very much a product of the creator, you can and should always attempt to approach pieces that make you uncomfortable. Making sense of concepts that aren’t easily accessible will grant every poet a different set of challenges and rewards. Accepting that you will never mesh with someone’s work, however hard you try, is also an important admission to make.
Someone told me that about my work a while back, and I learnt a lot from it.
Not everyone will be your friend is still a truth that makes me sad, because I would dearly love to live in a world where everyone could find parity and empathy with each other. The fact remains that this is never going to be the case until some fairly fundamental things alter on a systemic level, and as that is far less likely than me altering in my lifetime, I will keep striving for my own change as a priority.
Growth as a creative is absolutely fundamental to progression, unless you are lucky enough to be able to bypass the gatekeeping systems that currently exist. It is possible, of course it is, but money remains the key in this industry, as it does in literally every other. This morning, I am reminded of how proud I am with the first draft of the piece that was read aloud yesterday. It will only get better in time.
That, in the end, is all that will ever really matter going forward.
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