Dear friends,
I hope these first weeks of 2020 have been good to you. I imagine many of us have started the year with new resolutions (or maybe old resolutions but new excitement and momentum). May I share one of my resolutions with you? I wouldn’t call it “new” as much as reborn.
I’m starting 2020 by staring down one of my fears. In a couple of weeks I’m going back to graduate school to complete my MFA in creative nonfiction writing.
The school part isn’t what I’ve feared. I love being part of a community of learners and writers. Nothing inspires me more.
There was a period of time when writing sessions would often come to an abrupt end. The culprit: painful memories of some of my experiences as a hospital chaplain that I was trying to write about. The blessing of time passing, however, has calmed those storms.
There was a time when being vulnerable on the page would have been the thing that stopped me from writing anything truly meaningful. But writing this newsletter and various other pieces has gradually assuaged most of my discomfort with writing with the requisite openness that I, too, expect of a memoirist.
So, what is it, really?
Maybe the answer can be best understood with a little Tess MFA history.
After a couple of false starts and stops, in December 2017 I completed my first semester in the Creative Nonfiction MFA Program at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. After my dad passed away in January 2018 I took a semester off; I’ve not completed another semester since.
I did start up again in July 2018, only to stop again two months later. What was wrong with me, I wondered. If writing my memoir is so important to me, why was I derailing myself at every turn?
The wisdom of my MFA program director, Leslie (who has, I’m sure, helped many a writer “off the ledge” and back into their creative work), has helped to bring the source of my fear into clearer focus. It seems so obvious to me now. Why is it the thing right in front of us, jumping up and down and yelling “pick me, pick me,” is the thing we are often least willing to acknowledge? I suppose in my case there was some pride involved, of feeling sure I could do it on my own.
Leslie shared a marvelous essay with me, written by Gail Godwin, and titled, “The Watcher at the Gate.” If I had read the essay back in September 2018 when Leslie first shared it with me, perhaps I’d be an MFA graduate by now. Fortunately I came back to the essay a few weeks ago. I read it and said to myself, Leslie knew.
The source of my fear: my inner critic.
“The Watcher,” Godwin writes, “rejects too soon and discriminates too severely.” She goes on to say:
“It is amazing the lengths a Watcher will go to keep you from pursuing the flow of your imagination. Watchers are notorious pencil sharpeners, ribbon changers, plant waterers, home repairers and abhorrers of messy rooms or messy pages. They are compulsive looker-uppers. They are superstitious scaredy-cats. They cultivate self-important eccentricities they think are suitable for ‘writers.’ And they’d rather die (and kill your inspiration with them) than risk making a fool of themselves.”
For anyone interested in reading Gail Godwin’s entire essay, click here. She describes the “various ways to outsmart, pacify, or coexist with your Watcher,” including writing him or her a letter.
“Dear Watcher,” Godwin wrote to hers, “What is it you’re so afraid I’ll do?”
She held his pen for him, she writes, “and he replied instantly with a candor that has kept me from truly despising him.”
“‘Fail,’ he wrote back.”
Let’s be brave together this year in all of our pursuits–creative or otherwise. Being brave doesn’t mean we won’t feel fear, including the fear of failure. It simply means we’ll keep doing the work despite our fear.
Let’s make friends with our Watcher, perhaps even invite them into our work. Allow them to sharpen a pencil or two, occasionally check a definition, or find a helpful synonym. And then get right back to it.
You can be assured of my prayers; I ask you for yours as well.
I’ll continue writing my newsletter, but will most likely send it out once, rather than twice, a month. I’m excited to share this continuing journey with you. Please know that I’d truly love to hear about and support you in the journey you have planned for 2020.
May you be blessed in your work!
(Photo Credit: Robert Bye on Unsplash)