Falling Into a Funk

This week along with brave souls Bayles & Orland, authors of Art & Fear: Observations On The Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, we are going to fall into a funk. Don’t worry. I promise—funks are part of the process.

If you’re like most artists we know, you’re probably accustomed to watching your work unfold smoothly enough for long stretches of time, until one day—for no immediately apparent reason—it doesn’t. Hitting that unexpected rift is commonplace to the point of cliché, yet artists commonly treat each recurring instance as somber evidence of their own personal failure.  Nominees for Leading Role in a Continuing Artists’ Funk are: (1) you’ve entirely run out of new ideas forever, or (2) you’ve been following a worthless deadend path the whole time. And the winner is: (fortunately) neither. One of the best kept secrets of artmaking is that new ideas come into play far less frequently than practical ideas—ideas that can be reused for a thousand variations, supplying the whole framework for a whole body of work rather than a single piece.  (55-56)

Hmmmm? Doesn’t this go against everything we thought about what art is—and who we have to be to make it?  Original? Daring? Brilliant? Nope—it doesn’t. The passage above reminds me of Julia Cameron’s—The Vein of Gold—it’s not about being practical really—it’s about tapping into what we care about most. What calls to us, informs us, makes us who we are—we can use in a variety of ways. Think about what we read, view, and listen to as consumers. I do like things outside of my favorite genres—but I definitely have my favorites. Singer/songwriters from James Taylor to Tracy Chapman to the Indigo Girls. Books—family oriented middle grades—from Winn Dixie to Keeper to Harriet the Spy. Television—Law and Order to the Chicago Code to NYPD Blue. 

Whether it is a singer I love; a book I love, or a TV show I am addicted to the forats and these artists are all different but they resonate with a similar energy. For me, words matter. Families matter. Injustice and corruption matter. Put it all together and what you get is what I write about—families, justice, and words. It could be a blog post, an essay, a novel, a picture book, or even a poem. It could be a book set in the past as Between Us Baxters is, a novel set here today—as Truth with a Capital T  is—or it could be a picture book about the relationship between a boy and his world leader grandfather, ala Grandfather Gandhi (forthcoming--Antheneum).  Is it practical to write from this vein of gold? Perhaps. But more importantly it is simply what matters to me most.

Beginner’s Luck? Not For This Schmuck

Another Monday with our friends, Art and Fear. At least I hope they are getting to be our friends—our good friends—since they are always with us. Too bad David Bayles and Ted Orland are not, but we do have their gem of a book to keep us company and buoy our spirits. 

 

In Chapter V, Finding Our Work, Bayles and Orland go into depth on how our work is always honest. Brutally honest, if we look close enough.

Look at your work and it tells you how it is when you hold back or when you embrace. When you are lazy, your art is lazy; when you holds back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands there staring, hands in its pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes. 

Bayles and Orland go on to talk about a visual artist friend who took up dance. She threw herself into her new passion, taking classes, dancing with abandon. Soon, she was asked to join a dance troupe. The thought of performing and dancing for others—and not just herself—had her dancing fall apart. Where she danced with abandon before now she was stilted and over thought each movement. She stopped—frustrated and depressed. But after a few weeks of withdrawal she is back at it. Finding her way in dance—balancing her passion with the expectations of others. 

At the Writers’ League of Texas where I used to work, a writer came in one day. She had questions about publishing and which class would benefit her the most. She said, “I have beginner’s luck. What I write first comes out the best, and when I revise things fall apart.” I listened and while I believe in the abandon of beginners luck—I told her her best work would come from a combination of abandon and critical thinking. I mentioned my own version of the above. Balancing our inner critic and the external critic makes work we begin to takes seriously amp up in importance. Our words can get as stiff and over thought as a dancer’s moves. Then we have to work to stay limber—we have to work to remind ourselves not to hesitate; to be brave. We have to make choices and commit—no holds barred. We then see these choices through to the end and then we can make new choices if need be. To be brilliant we can’t be timid. We must be bold. We must let ourselves fail and flail, because, you know, many novels are began on a whim but they aren’t completed, sold, or published on a whim. We can tap into the “beginner’s mind” but it is not necessary to stay there to succeed—that makes the hard work of art feel like a game of chance—and art isn’t about chance. It may feel like Russian roulette with the variety of critical opinions that pop up when we put our work out there—but the creating, the deep down soul searching a work requires daily is a muscle we build—and muscles grow over time and use. They don’t atrophy.

Art & Fear: Acceptance and Approval

Those wise men, David Bayles and Ted Orland, authors of Art& Fear are at it again. This time with words of wisdom on acceptance vs approval.

“The difference between acceptance and approval is subtle, but distinct. Acceptance means having your work counted as the real thing; approval means having your work liked.”

They go on to add:

The Art of Connection

…"Courting approval, even that of peers, puts a dangerous amount of work in the hands of the audience. Worse yet, the audience is seldom in a position to grant (or withhold) approval on the one issue that really counts—namely, whether or not you’re making progress in your work. They’re in a good position to comment on how they’re moved (or challenged or entertained) by the finished product, but have little knowledge or interest in your process.  Audience comes later. The only pure connection is between you and your work.”  (page 47, Art & Fear)

There can be a connection between author and audience—an important one—but the connection to one’s work, where one is that day, in the present moment and the only thing really an artist can count on. But as much as I believe in doing the work and being in the process first and foremost, the desire to be accepted and approved isn’t a condition merely of an artist—it is a human condition. Wrestling with any and all of my humanness, is what I think, and hope, makes me a decent writer. Of course, I can’t let the desire for approval get out of hand, and more than anyone else's approval what fiction writing and the study of craft has taught me is to seek my own approval—not just in my writing choices but in all my decisions.

Fear of Flaws

May & June: Observations on Art & Fear

My best friend since 15, Hollie Hunt, actress and director

Last week I shared about my fears around taking up two new creative pursuits, African dancing and mosaic making. I remember encountering these same fears and doubts twelve years or so ago, when I moved to NYC to become an actor but instead found myself as a writer. This happened as it was meant to happen. I am not an actor, or as my best friend said, “Some actors can write but they are not writers and some writers can act but they are not actors. You, Bethany, are a writer—not an actor.”

Ah, I am glad I heard those words—as hard as they were to hear at the time. Hollie was right. I am a writer, not an actor. It is now what  I have dedicated my life to—to telling stories, and to helping others find and tell the stories inside them. It feels right and it always felt right, if I am honest with myself. That is why I think being a writer is a calling for me. 
  

But not everything creative is a calling. I don’t expect myself to learn African dance and have it be anything other than good cardiovascular exercise, a way for me to move my body, and experience the story of dance in a way that I haven’t yet experienced story. I don’t expect to become a major mosaic artist but I would like to see how my brain takes shards and pieces and fragments of things—mirrors, or ceramics, or wood and pieces them back together again.

I have been broken before and I will be broken again. It is only by encountering and interacting with my flaws do I feel whole.

 

Bayles & Orland say in Art & Fear,

“If you think good work is somehow synonymous with perfect work you are headed for big trouble. Art is human, error is human, ergo, art is error. Inevitably, your work, (like, uh, the preceding syllogism) will be flawed. Why? Because you are a human being, and only human beings, warts and all make art. “ (29).

Ugh, these series of blog posts are going to end with me having met my creative fears head on, aren’t they? Ok, I am human, I will wrestle with my fears—maybe I will even dance with them.

A Little Help from My Friends

May & June: Observations on Art & Fear

 Last week, I discussed conquering doubts. This week, Chapter II in Art & Fear has a little box around an operating manual for not quitting. Bayles & Orland suggest:

A.      Make friends with others who make art, and share your-in-progress-work with each other frequently.

B.      Learn to think of (A), rather than the Museum of Modern Art (or in our case, the New York Times Bestseller list or NBA committee) as the destination of your work.

The Champagne Sisters: Kekla Magoon, Josanne LaValley, Laurie Calkhoven and myself

I instinctively took those suggestions before ever reading them, because they were the only way I, as a writer, knew to cope with the process of what we do and how we do it—while knowing the “how” we do it changes so often.  My fiancé has a nickname for me—“The Sharer-er.”  I need to share about the struggles I am having with my work in a safe place and just as important I needed a place to share the small joys. My group in NYC dubbed ourselves The Champagne Sisters because we had champagne whenever one of us sold a project. We also celebrated by going out to an annual brunch over which we shared our goals for the year ahead, examined the creative goals we had for the year just past, and we spun around under the arms of the Alice’s Tea Cup hostess to get ourselves sprinkled with fairy dust. 

As a child, I did this too. This “share-er” thing. I called my mother to the window to clap for me when I did a trick on the swing set—her clapping—her witnessing—was the way I knew I had accomplished something; that I did indeed actually do an inverted flip over or under the metal bar. On my recent trip to Georgia, my sister handed me a scrapbook I made of my accomplishments in middle school and high school—there amid the bad hair and dorky poems I saw myself trying to document—(a way of communing with myself) my artistic dreams. There I was trying to share the ups and downs of my journey the only way that I knew how—with scissors and paste. 

I don’t call my mom to look out at the window at me as I do cartwheels and somersaults and I don’t have a scrapbook or journal where I save the bumps and bruises of my journey anymore—instead I have the books I write and the acknowledgement pages filled with names of friends and family who witnessed that specific journey with me.  I also know the projects I am working on now may or may not be published one day, but the daily work, and the sharing of the daily work with those in my life is truly the only thing I can count on and the thing that sustains me most.