Just a Lil’ Goat Pellet
I’m busy figuring out how in the fuck to use Twitter and trying to get my voice back for fall quarter after reading so much Anthony Powell the last few months (I can be a bit of an imitator, and believe me – brandishing wordy, pseudo-British-Twentieth-Century elevated language in an essay/memoir in which one huffs nail polish remover preceding a three-way at 10:30 in the morning on Labor Day just doesn’t work), so I’ll leave you with Glen David Gold and Alice Sebold talking about fear of success in writing, a topic that seems to have popped up in one capacity or other over the weekend on Bark. I’ll be back in a week, quite possibly on the topic of regaining your voice after reading one so drastically different from your own, though I’ll try to think of something cooler, like this. Rock the Casbah, y’all.
Thanks for posting this. I have a lot of fears, but I don’t think that success is one of them. Maybe if it became one, I’d be more likely to succeed. Aha.
Fear can be such a propulsive force. My neck has been bothering me for a few weeks, and I really should go to the doctor, but knowing that there could be something wrong has made me so productive in terms of writing and exercising ever since, and I’ve had such a great couple of weeks hanging out with friends. The danger in functioning in such a way is obvious in terms of health, but also because I could get hooked on using fear and brevity as a means to write, bike, and cultivate friendships. It’s like how Barry Hannah’s work suffered when he quit drinking, or how Mark Childress quit writing for two years when he quit smoking. When I do go to the doctor and find out that everything is fine, fingers crossed, I worry there will be this sense of overabundance, which may stifle my momentum, because “there will always be time” to finish everything. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why people are often obsessed with the end of the world, almost fetishize it – it ups the stakes and gives them a reason to get things done.
Wow. Profound. I suppose I should be thankful for fear. And more aware of how it can be useful.