I Like Big Buts

The Artists' Way Week Ten: Recovering a Sense of Self Protection

If this week had a theme song, it would be Let it Flow¹, an annoying ditty sung to the tune of everyone’s favorite Frozen earworm.

When we follow the flow, our writing flows, Cameron writes. But when we resist the flow because we don’t like that shaky-about-to-fall-off-the-back-of-a-pickup-truck feeling,² we reach for bad habits that block us:

• We eat too much sugar!

• We fill our calendars with commitments that corroborate our alibis that we are, in fact, too busy to write.

• We get super obsessed with, well, insert whatever it is you’re super obsessed with, and Cameron will tell you you’re using it as an excuse.

My first response to all this was “take your guru hands off my Ghirardelli, Julia!”

My second response was to grudgingly concede her point. When our writing spooks us most, we often reach for chocolate that which calms us best. Or at least I do.

But Cameron is only getting started.

She continues week ten’s chapter with sober warnings against the most common pitfalls of a creative life—workaholism, drought, fame, and competition.³

With workaholism, writers turn the joy of writing into a slog. “Work abuse creates in our artist a Cinderella Complex,” Cameron writes. “We are always dreaming of the ball and always experiencing the ball and chain.”

With drought, writers experience lack in their practice—a lack of inspiration, a lack of motivation, a lack of the next great idea.

Fame can turn your writing life inside out, too, Cameron writes: “The point of the work is the work. Fame interferes with that perception... Instead of writing being about writing, it becomes about being recognized.”

And competition leads writers to compare and despair.⁴ Writers happily plug along on their drafts until another writer sprints across the finish line and they decide they themselves are sloths. Writers compare their rough drafts to published drafts and decide they’re hacks. Novelists debuting over age fifty spot a thirty-under-thirty list and decide they're methuselahs.

The cure for all of this, Cameron says, is to focus on the work. Workaholics can establish boundaries that protect the integrity of their work: if your Stephen-King-esque 2000-words-a-day goal has you filling your draft with wordy drivel just to reach it, change your goal to an hour of focused work even—and maybe especially—if you cut more words in that hour than you write. Writers experiencing a drought can commit to morning pages and artist dates. Writers distracted by daydreams of fame can whip off a fan letter to themselves, mail it, and then get back to work. And novelists comparing themselves to others can remember their work is the only thing they have control over and—you guessed it—get back to work!

Great advice, all of it, but it’s easier said than done—much easier—particularly when our inner critics are so eager to hiss in our ears:

• I want to write this book, but the premise might be too close to that new movie that came out.

• I want to write, but I’m busy, busy, busy.

• I want to write, but nobody cares what I have to say.

Eric Maisel, the psychotherapist who developed the creativity coaching specialty that helps artists identify and clear the hurdles between them and their creative goals, offers writers a simple but powerful tool to sidestep excuses called “the big but.”

When we construct sentences about why we can’t write by putting the excuse at the end (as they are in all three sentences above), we grant that excuse the power of the last word. But if we flip the sentence, we give the last word to our intention to write.

• My premise might be too close to that new movie BUT I’ll write it anyway.

• I’m busy, busy, busy, BUT I’ll write anyway.⁵

• Nobody cares what I have to say, BUT, dammit, I’ll write anyway.

I’m not saying a three-letter word will fix your biggest woes. Your inner workaholic may still lobby for you to keep going over and over (and over) that first chapter instead of moving on. You may still be on the hunt for a project that really excites you. And you may still want the splashy book deal like Golem wants that ring—so much that watching someone else get your ring might well make you scream my preciousss⁶). But in the moment that three-letter word might be just enough to get your heart and mind back to your own work, which is all you really ever have any control over anyway⁷.

Because—as Cameron said above—the point of the work really is the work.”⁸

1. Sir Mix-a-Lot’s classic was a close second, but we’re not there yet.

2. Tell me I’m not the only one who almost tumbled out of the back of a moving pick up truck while standing behind the cab when the driver turned to the right a bit too enthusiastically. What’s that? Just me? Ah, NH childhoods.

3. Honestly, I think part of the reason I’ve been able to reread this book at so many different junctures is that every chapter is packed with enough material to fill four chapters, so no matter where I was as a writer when I read, there was always something to glom onto.

4. No idea who coined compare and despair, but it wasn’t me. A quick google search for compare and despair leads to 16.6 million hits, so I think it’s fair to say that either a) no one knows or b) it’s one of those expressions that came to the earth fully formed like—my husband insists—Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock.” The man has a point. Can you remember the first time you heard that song? Can you remember a time you didn’t know all the lyrics? How can you be completely sure that “Rock Around the Clock” isn’t some cosmic earworm that has always been (for those of us born after 1956 anyway) and always will be? You can’t be completely sure. Just as I can’t be sure of the origin of the phrase compare and despair.

5. Even if it’s just a few minutes, how powerful is it to make space in a busy day for the artistic work you yearn to do.

6. Though, honestly, what’s the point? As a writer you’re always ahead of some writers and behind others. The writing life is way more joyful if you can be excited for others successes and let it inspire you to keep at it (I sense a post on writerly envy in the not so distant future).

7. Yes, you do have control even on the days the work zigs when you’d rather it zagged.

8. I wrote these alt lyrics for “Baby Got Back,” and they really fit anywhere, but if you think I’m deleting them, you don’t know me very well. With apologies to Sir Mix-a-Lot:

I like big buts and I can’t deny
my excuses are a big lie
And when my mind slaps back at that itty bitty but
With a big but that says nope, you go WRITE!