Things I want to talk about in this blog:
Being self-critical is really hard and really useful. Some people do it better than others. Why is this important for us as writers?
So, yeah. Being self-critical is hard, and not for the most obvious reasons (although, also for those, a little bit). It's far, far too easy to go too hard in the other direction, hence the title of this blog. My self-esteem is tied, in part, to my perception of my objective worth as a person but I am also the least objective person in the world on this particular topic. So my self-image is either "Goddess" or "Satan", with no in-between. For obvious reasons this can be both awful and excellent depending on my mood.
Prisig's writing is so remarkably self-aware that I want to accuse him of falsifying his memories of himself to make his less aware. He doesn't react with outward anger towards those around him, but he remembers feeling the angry impulse; he shows his own insecurity in his physical descriptions when he turns away from conflict or emotion he does not want to engage with. This transparence kept me reading long past when my interest in the subject at hand. If I could emulate any aspect of his strategy, it would be his transparent self-image.
That mentality is especially critical in writers, because our taste evolves far ahead of our abilities (in most cases, at least). So I know when my writing is bad and I can head how off the words sound, but I don't always know what makes them this way. To be so honest with ourselves regarding not only criticism but complements and goals would improve our writing a thousandfold. The self-affirmation that your work sucks and that it sucks slightly less than the one before can help you move forward in you life instead of dwelling on the negative. We are taught that these negative criticisms are comprehensive, that self-complementing is a weakness. The positive is a vital part of the creative process, because it moves the writer in the right direction.
After all, you don't really know a thing until you know how to do maintenance on it and take better care of it than just handing it off the mechanics (or technicians) whenever something goes wrong. Ex. I can't repair a computer, but I sure as hell know how to debug one. And manuscripts that you can't edit are worse than useless.
But the most important tool for writers is the one many people care for the worst and that is the most valuable application of Prisig's book for me: self-care. Without the writer, a book is just a lost idea, a conference paper waits for someone to have a distantly similar though, a poem stays in the inanimate objects that have failed to inspire. For Prisig and his son, the motorcycle trip is a journey of self-care
Also, Prisig rises earlier in the morning than anyone should ever feel compelled to.
Mary. You are awesome. I really enjoyed the way you tied in your blog to class on Thursday. I really enjoyed what you brought up about editing and how being self-aware relates back to us as writers. For me I have the opposite problem. Maybe I am more like John. I do not know how to mechanically fix my writing. Grammar and editing have always been a struggle for me as a writer. For a long time I was discouraged to go into English by my teachers in high school. I took that criticism rather personally. Yet, I would like to argue with your point that "And manuscripts that you can't edit are worse than useless." I am a huge believer in collaborative writing. I think that part of the beauty of the writing process is being able to share my work with others that have opposite talents as me. I think it is more about bringing things to the table. I might bring ideas and questions. Other people are going to push back on those, and we are going to work together to figure out what we want to contribute as a whole to the conversation. I think you can mechanically know a machine (or writing) backwards and forwards but, at least for me, if I don't feel connected to it in a broader way I will not care and that is when a manuscript is useless. When I first started learning how to drive my dad told me, "You just have to feel the car. Stop trying to drive "perfectly" and just feel the car and what it is doing." This was the greatest advice for me, as a firm believer in that if I just followed the rules enough I would be a great driver, turns out I am not. I hate driving because I don't know how to "feel" a car. Writing is the combination of the romantic and the classic. I think that is what makes it special.
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