I've been exploring this fear of failure...in writing...and the need to press on regardless, because it is what I know I must do. I have heard people say that writing is a disease you are lucky not to catch. Whichever it is, I was reminded of a wonderful, quotable story about the fear of writing that had to do with someone saying writing is the only art in which the artist often avoids the thing it is they are supposed to be doing. Take any art, or any non-traditional profession in which someone excels. Painters paint. Actors act. Tennis pros...play tennis. You are only good at the thing because you do the thing...over and over again. But writers try so hard not to do the thing. It was more interesting than it sounds. I'm not doing it justice. I liked it so much when I found it years ago that I wrote it out in longhand and actually framed it...had it up over my writing desk for years. As soon as I made the connection, I busied myself to find it so I could post it. Alas, in the pre-moving-boxes-everywhere craziness that has taken over our tiny apartment, it is nowhere to be found.
So where do I turn? To a new Wiki toy. Behold, my friends, WikiQuote. Wiki clearly has a thing for me. There's no other way to interpret its various offerings that are sent up into my line of sight like a flare off the bow of a sailboat -- off in the distance, but clear as day -- just when I need them most. Who needs Bartlett's when you've got Wiki? Giddy at the find of my new Wiki wonder (and flattered by Wiki's persistence), I searched for my long lost writers-who-don't-write quote. WikiQuote has many things to offer. My quote is not one of them. But no matter. I've found this instead:
"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. " --Joan Didion
And that, my dear readers, is Wiki for you. I was flirting along, teasing quotes out of Wiki, knowing all the while that it might disappoint. And just when I think I'm getting to the bad part of the date (when I realize Wiki will never change, no matter how much work I put in), Wiki tells it like it is. I can't think of a more precise description of why I write. I also can't think of a better way to state the unique whirlygig loopiness that is writing: you fear the writing, but you write to find what you fear and really, truly, the only way for a writer to work through the fear is, you guessed it, to write.
Thank you Joan. Thank you Wiki. Consider me humbled for the moment (if ever so briefly...) Pardon me while I slink off to actually do some writing.
