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DO YOU EVER say to yourself, “I’m a terrible writer”?
You just shouldn’t say that, because it’s not true. It can’t be true. Here is why. If you are feeling bad about yourself, fine. I feel bad about myself too. But saying “I’m a terrible writer” is what cognitive therapists call global labeling, or globalizing. It not only isn’t true—and that’s one good reason not to say it—but it can actually harm you. Cognitive therapists know that the things we say about ourselves affect our moods; saying them can actually affect how we feel and, in a sense, bring about the very things they assert. That is, if you keep saying, “I’m a terrible writer,” you will find yourself unable to write and thus will never achieve the thing you want to achieve.
Saying “I’m a terrible writer” can be pretty useful, though, in one sense. It’s a great way to avoid feeling things you don’t want to feel.
So when you find yourself thinking, “I’m a terrible writer,” ask what it is you don’t want to feel. Is it the uncertainty of ever attaining your hopes and dreams for yourself as a writer? Is it your fervent but fragile desire to be understood and appreciated for your writing? Is it the particular emotions that come up during your actual writing, feelings that seem like they might get out of control or threaten your secure sense of who you are, what you are worth, and how you look to other people?
Saying “I’m a terrible writer” must serve some purpose. If it didn’t matter to you, you wouldn’t say anything at all. It’s a clear signal that you have some powerful feelings about the issue of your writing.
Well, surprise. Those powerful feelings you have about your writing—those feelings that in the past have stopped you from writing—can actually be used to stimulate some good writing, perhaps the best writing you’ve done in a long time. Because they’re real feelings. Real feelings make good writing. That’s the simple, honest truth.
So make no mistake: I am saying that you shouldn’t say, “I’m a terrible writer.” You should never say that, because it is masking some other thought or feeling you are having about yourself. If you do say it, here are some of the things you might actually mean:
Okay, now try this, just as an experiment. Say to yourself, “I’m a terrible writer.” Notice how it feels. What event or experience is flashing through your mind? What do you see? What do you remember?
As writers, we can work with negative statements like that. We can neutralize them by using them as jumping-off points for imaginative and emotional work. We can make good writing out of them.
Write about what it means for you to say, “I am a terrible writer.” It might be something someone said about your writing, or getting a bad grade on a report, or whatever. Write about that. Recall it in detail. That memory is yours and yours alone, and it is powerful and worth writing honestly about. If you write honestly, it will not be terrible writing. In writing something that is not terrible, you will have disproved the axiom “I’m a terrible writer.”
Maybe you don’t want to disprove the axiom. The axiom can get you out of things. Long-term, though, it’s stopping you from doing something you want to do.
So write about the event that flashes through your mind when you say, “I’m a terrible writer.” Pay attention to what happens as you begin to write about this thing.
You may start to feel drowsy or irritated or frustrated. Maybe that is when the thought comes to mind, “I am a terrible writer.”
Keep going. When images come into your head, pay attention to their physical details, the quality of light, the voices. Write it all down. It’s material!
No person is free from negative thoughts like these. What makes a writer different from other people is that you can look at a negative thought and make a choice to use it. You can turn it into something. You might attribute it to a fictional character and ask that character, “Why do you say that?” And the character might answer, “I say that because in fifth grade I turned in a paper and it came back with red marks all over it. So, in my fifth-grade mind, I decided I must be a terrible writer.”
If you continue to interrogate this character, images may arise. You might imagine the desk of this child and the voice of the teacher and the stuffy air in the classroom and the tears that fell onto the paper, that wide-lined pulpy paper of elementary school. You’ll feel the smooth, laminated plywood surface of the metal desk with the compartment underneath. You’ll feel how the child sitting at that desk fervently longed to be able to write, how the dream of being able to write hovered over him like a glimmering object just out of reach. In handwriting class, he tried to get the letters right but kept reversing the P and the R . Some girls in his class had such beautiful handwriting that he wondered how they did it. Their handwriting seemed one with their beauty and their person, and he marveled at their unattainable grace. You’ll remember how worried he was that if his parents saw his paper with all the red marks on it, they would think he was screwing up in school. You’ll feel the humiliation he anticipated and how he cried when he showed his mother the paper and how his mother was so kind about it. But still, many years later, when the grown man had to write a report for his boss, sometimes he would hear that voice in his head saying, “I’m a terrible writer.” He’d look around for someone else who would write it, or he’d delay writing it, or he’d wait until the last minute and then dash something off. After all, he believes deep down he’s a terrible writer.
A writer can experience something and then enter into the emotion of it and unpack what is there by following the images that come to mind. This is the great power of being a writer: anything that comes into our heads, however screwed up or crazy it is, can be used as material. We can do this with our very worst secret and most shameful thoughts and feelings. We can attribute them to fictional characters, and if people ask us if they represent us, we can say, “No, of course not. It’s fiction.”
These thoughts, these awful thoughts that haunt us, we use them as fuel for our work. We burn them up in the furnace of the heart. The memories, the pain, the crazy things that come into our heads—they’re all just fuel. We burn them all in the furnace of the heart.