"The true genius shudders at incompleteness - and usually prefers silence to saying something which is not everything it should be. "
Edgar Allan Poe
This is exactly how I feel, Mr. Poe has shot at it spot on. Not that i'm saying i'm a genius but the fact that this is the reason why I do not show any of my work to anyone, sometimes not even myself. It is not that I think it's not good enough or i'm shy about it, it's the fact that I don't feel that it is complete. I don't feel that I need to show the world what I can do when it isn't the best of what I can do. I don't want to release one of my works then look back years later and think this is terrible, I forgot to add this and that. My thoughts are an on going flow of a river and I continue to add to it everyday. I also do not compromise. This is the most terrible thing you can bring upon yourself. Everything deserves more than mediocre.
The other day I was looking through my oldest blog entries, when I stumbled upon several that made me feel embarrassed and even ashamed of myself. My first impulse was to delete them all, but I changed my mind because they’ve become like a living record of my growth over time. So I agree with Poe’s suggestion that we talk less and say more, but I think that overperfectionism can stifle our creativity. Walt Whitman way over-revised Leaves of Grass throughout his life, for instance. The poems didn’t necessarily improve as he aged, though. They just became snap shots of who he was at the time of each new edition. We’re constantly evolving day by day, so we’re bound to say/write/do things that we’ll regret in the future. I feel like if we never said incomplete/imperfect things, then we’d never be challenged to learn from our mistakes.
ReplyDeleteHow do you know when your work is complete? If we’re constantly changing, is it even possible for a work to be “the best you can do”? Also, is it safe to assume that our judgment and writing always gets better as we age?
I guess i've been dodging the fact that I'm not writing as much as I used to and would like to. I mean usually my point of view on things is that I just keep putting things out and whatever comes out is whatever is in my head and that's basically a photograph of one specific thought I had in a specific time in my life and there's no point in editing and revising that thought. But lately, I feel like i'm pressuring myself to spew out more mature and polished writing just because I know I can do better than what I used to do.
ReplyDeleteOr maybe lately i've just had an ongoing flow of words and phrases that I don't feel like i'm finished at all. Usually I know when my work is complete when I can say no more or cannot expand and articulate things better.
I think it's just my personal expectation of myself. I keep pushing myself to better things because I have so much faith that I can transcend my regular writing patterns, that I can think of better things to say and better ways of saying them.
And I know I shouldn't even think of how good a piece of writing will be in 10 years or so because we don't write for the future, we write for the present and maybe the past. We write what we feel at that moment so there's no point thinking I will be better in a few years and not finish something. I guess I am just procrastinating.