“Do we need to send you to a psychiatrist?”
I know that my relationship with the process of creation is uniquely my own, influenced by my life experiences.
About a year ago my favorite horror author, Josh Malerman, released the auto-biographical Watching Evil Dead. Examining his own perceived success at a time of great change in his life, he asks the question, “What does a writer deserve?”
It’s a question I’ve struggled with for much of my life.
I’ve always loved writing. Creating in general, really, but especially writing.
Blame elementary school teachers who focused on it so much. Blame it as a method of dissociation. Blame it on the natural progression from being a prolific reader early in life.
I don’t claim to be a good writer. I don’t have to be. But I can tap tap tap away on these keys for hours and – generally speaking – feel good about it.
So I get it when Josh says that what an artist deserves is the work itself. Relying on external validation is a dangerous thing.
But so is external invalidation…
“Do we need to send you to a psychiatrist?”
There was a day during my Winter Break when I was in middle school that was full of early-teenage drama and betrayal. I marched home in the snow and cranked up my angry music and started writing.
Up to that point I’d mostly written about sports or mysteries. Anodyne little nothings; easily written, easily read, and easily discarded.
This was the first time in my young life that I really wrote with feeling behind it. I poured that pain onto the page and it just kept flowing. It was cathartic and the end result was – by my standards at the time – incredible. A Christopher Pike-ian YA thriller short story unlike anything I’d previously created.
It felt so good to have made that. To have turned my feelings into it. To have shown that I was capable of writing something like that. I needed to share it.
So I had my father read it.
“Do we need to send you to a psychiatrist?”
The first feedback I got on this thing that I’d poured myself into wasn’t about the quality or the content. It was that something must be wrong with me to have created it in the first place.
Did I need therapy back then? Probably. And not just because of one day of teenage angst. Today I’m of the opinion that everyone needs a little extra help sometimes.
But I understood then that this was no offer of help. It was a threat. Something was wrong with me and it needed to be corrected.
So I retreated to my desk and cranked out one of those inoffensive little sports stories and proved that I can still write happy, frivolous stuff. I can still make it just so. I don’t need to be punished.
Josh revisits creation in his latest novel, Pictures of You, released today.
(Light spoilers from here on out.)
The bulk of the story centers around a twisted artist and Emily, the victim of her latest piece.
It turns out that Emily herself was once a budding artist. In an act of jealousy, that talent was discouraged, and Emily simply forgot about art, setting it aside entirely.
After I finished reading an ARC of Watching Evil Dead, I posted to social media that I fundamentally disagree with Josh’s view of the process of creation. Upon further reflection, it may be less that I disagree and more that it’s missing something for me.
Josh did not account for the impact of discouragement. And when visiting that concept in Pictures of You, he wrapped it in a nice and tidy bow of targeted amnesia.
It’s a misunderstanding or mischaracterization or diminishment of discouragement that causes me to mentally lash out and reject his otherwise-valid point.
In the face of discouragement I never stopped writing, never stopped creating. My relationship with it changed, though.
I became much more careful about who I shared my work with. I became much more afraid of publishing. Every story, every painting, every blog post, the question in the back of my head is “Am I wrong for creating this?”
I understand, logically, that there is no wrong. Just like I understand where Josh is coming from with regards to the act of creation being all that an author (or artist) deserves.
I also understand discouragement. I understand how discouragement can poison the act of creation.
And I understand creating despite discouragement. It is hard and it’s scary. And I might not deserve more than the act of creation itself but I recognize that I need confirmation that I’m not wrong.
