My desire to write is part of an enduring search for autonomy. By “autonomy” I mean the freedom to make work that I think is good on my own terms. The thing that holds me back is my need for certainty. This conflict is within all of us: longing for independence is always shadowed by the desire for guardrails, for safety, for the mind to be cordoned off and coddled. It’s mommy-hunger, daddy-hunger, Plath’s “boot in the face, the brute.”
I love what you say about how you can just "say the thing I felt." Dressing your writing up in a sloppy attempt to censor what you THINK someone might think are overly simplistic/generic/whatever thoughts is the death of one's writing process and the joy they take in writing (which are just the same thing I think)
This resonates so much. It's like we have artificially built constraints to be perfect or hit a home run every time.
"to be successfully creative, you have to shed the part of yourself that desperately wants reassurance. It’s only then that you can escape cliche and escape paradigmatic thinking".
I have been thinking along similar lines lately - I find that reading Samuel R. Delany’s interviews, or his essays on fiction writing, has been liberating / has allowed me to identify parts of my creative self that I’ve censored or underestimated. And you know, at the very least, a guy like Delany is not going to lead you down safe and anodyne paths.
"Most people think that there are like, five people who can understand the world, and we should defer to their expert judgment."
i love this line. all the good artists i know are belligerent, opinionated folks (relative to gen. pop).
I love what you say about how you can just "say the thing I felt." Dressing your writing up in a sloppy attempt to censor what you THINK someone might think are overly simplistic/generic/whatever thoughts is the death of one's writing process and the joy they take in writing (which are just the same thing I think)
This resonates so much. It's like we have artificially built constraints to be perfect or hit a home run every time.
"to be successfully creative, you have to shed the part of yourself that desperately wants reassurance. It’s only then that you can escape cliche and escape paradigmatic thinking".
Love this so much, I want to read it every morning!! Thank you Ava 💗
I have been thinking along similar lines lately - I find that reading Samuel R. Delany’s interviews, or his essays on fiction writing, has been liberating / has allowed me to identify parts of my creative self that I’ve censored or underestimated. And you know, at the very least, a guy like Delany is not going to lead you down safe and anodyne paths.