joy

We’ve all had those days, where we have to pry every word out of us and they only come kicking and screaming and when we look over what we’ve written, we just put our heads in our hands and contemplate a career in math.

Nope. If this is what your despair looks like, you are not experiencing despair, my friend.

This is more like it, for writers. This is me, only with long pink hair.

And we’ve all been here on those really bad days.

Sometimes in those moments it helps to read other people’s writing. (Sometimes that only pushes us from the second picture to the third, but that’s another story.) So the other day I clicked over to Crescent Dragonwagon’s blog (highly recommended) and read this:

“Every piece of writing is essential to the writer, regardless of whether it works as a piece or not. Seeming unsuccess is as important as seeming success in our lives, as artists and as human beings.”

This is something I tend to forget. Mostly because if I invest time/energy/emotion in a piece, by damn I want it to work! And maybe, no matter what I do, it doesn’t.

And she’s saying (THANK GOD) that’s OK. You get something out, something that had to get out, and now there is space to write the next piece.

This is such a release of pressure, that not all our darlings need to be birthed into the world. Some of them need to live beneath the rocks, whispering to us, filling the void between the last good piece and the next one.

And then there’s that kicker, which she is so good at: “and as human beings.”

Why is unsuccess important to us as human beings? Personally, I’d like to succeed at everything, all the time. That would be fantastic.

But think of yourself as a stone bowl. The depth of your bowl is the depth of your soul; it indicates how deeply you can feel, relate to, and understand yourself and others. Now think of how that bowl was made. It was carved out. And that carving isn’t gentle and thoughtful–no, that carving involves metal tools and hammers and grinding and pounding. If you’re going to make a stone bowl with a piece of 00 sandpaper, you’re going to die before the first shallow depression is complete.

“Unsuccess” is the hammer–the chisel–the grinding force that breaks us open so we can feel. We need the failures, the difficult times, the brokenness that comes from daring to try something we’re not entirely sure will work, whether it’s writing or telling someone our deepest hopes and fears.

What we owe to our readers as writers, and our friends and loved ones as human beings, is a map of deep emotions, and if we keep ourselves so safe we never feel them, we sure as hell can’t write about or share them.

We all know people who do everything they can to stay comfortable, to keep their worlds safe, and they are not the people we go to when we are hurting. It is a truth that there is no one on the planet who is not suffering, but if we don’t turn ourselves inside out and share that suffering, let others know they are not alone, then no matter how hard the hammers come down, we will remain stones.

“When I find myself in hell, I stay there as long as I can.” Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said this and it points to the exact thing we can do to make our bowls deep. He’s not saying “Go out and find hell and/or create it every second.” He’s saying when we find ourselves there (and it’s inevitable), recognize where you are. Let it work you, soften you, shatter you.

How do you do that? You feel. You don’t numb out or get lost in distraction. And you don’t go the other way and make the feeling so huge and dramatic it becomes nothing but a caricature of itself. You stay with it–you feel where it is in your body–you let it take you but you don’t lose yourself in it. You hold on to your perspective–“this, too, shall pass.” And you realize that everyone, every person on the planet, suffers as you do. This is the birth of compassion.

Hell is a gift we have to consciously accept–we are trained in our addicted-to-comfort world to turn away, shut down, and lock it out. But the edge it provides is the only one that can cut to our cores. And as writers, sure, but how much more so as human beings, we need to feel to our cores, reach in and pull out our humanity, look others in the eye and say “Yes, I see that suffering, I see that joy, I see that anger and fear, and I am right here with you.”

Success is nice. Enjoy it.

But it is not a hammer.

Unsuccess is the key to deepening the bowl.