People's good qualities and bad qualities are usually two sides of the same coin. Someone who is good at planning things will inevitably be a bit bossy and prescriptive about your takeout order. It's the same energy. Someone who is chill and easy to get along with and forgiving will sometimes be annoyingly passive about something they should stand up for. That's also the same energy.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what Polly is saying here is that your chronic dissatisfaction and your desire to write and draw ARE THE SAME ENERGY. A creative person wants something to exist that doesn't exist yet. That's the drive to create. The question is, how do you turn that energy into a force that fuels your creative practice instead of a force that tears your life apart over and over. Polly gives a lot of good, specific advice here about grounding yourself in present-tense reality while also working on very specific, strange, labor-intensive writing/art projects. This is the way.
Starting a project is the hardest part because you're transitioning from glowing orb fantasy to gritty reality. I think that's why Polly recommends staying grounded in your sensory and emotional reality of daily life. If you have a place to stand in reality, and if you feel comfortable in reality, that's the place where you can welcome the art projects into real life. Making something is like opening a portal from fantasy into reality, so you really have to have secure footing in both the unreal and real worlds.
For me it's easier to do this with drawing than with writing, because drawing feels more real. And it's easier for me to do it with clay than with drawing, because what's realer than dirt?? (I have to do an illustration job this month and I'm dreading starting, but after writing this comment I'm realizing it will be a lot easier for me if I'm using real paper instead of my iPad.)
I am so grateful to read this letter and response, during this week when Wendell Berry died. If I put myself in the letter-writer's shoes, I probably don't want to hear from an old married lady coming into the comments to quote Wendell Berry. BUT. My father shared Berry's essay from Standing by Words -- "Poetry and Marriage: the Use of Old Forms" just before I got married and its proven to be a touchstone for me. The essential thesis of the essay is that limits -- the limits imposed by poetic forms, the limits imposed by marriage -- provide the grounding for fullness of life and creativity. The conclusion of the essay I have also seen quoted as a poem: "It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."
I don't mean to suggest that the LW will or should marry her current boyfriend, only that being on the precipice, perhaps, of "settling down" (yes, settling) is a beautiful and rich time of life, not the end creativity or adventure but an evolution to a new form of each.
This just HITS in all the right ways. My life circumstances are entirely different, and yet this is exactly what I needed to hear today! I already know I will be re-reading this one, many times.
Also: LOL this is so true! "There is zero baldness and shortness and awkwardness in the orb, because it’s ENTIRELY IMAGINARY."
I thought the letter-writer might like to know that I'm a writer who has spent forty - yes, FORTY! - years living in London, and yet I still spend far too much time wondering what my life would be like if I lived in Brooklyn, or LA, or Berlin, or wherever. Not Fuckyville, though, never Fuckyville.
Also, this, a thousand percent: " If he weren’t a symbol, if he were real, he would be far less interesting to you. It’s impossible for you to believe that, I know, but believe it anyway." How quickly the mystique wears off when this person becomes more real!
I think 30 is the perfect time to start writing! I also spent many years adventuring and experimenting and traveling, and now I’ve found that having a steady home, relationships, and routine is actually really conducive to the creative process. I was thinking about the part in the Artists’s Way, where Julia Cameron talks about frustrated artists, who subconsciously create a lot of friction and drama in their personal lives to avoid creating. As Polly says, writing is excruciatingly hard and requires a lot of consistent effort. I think sometimes we have to choose if we want to live out the drama in our creative lives or in the constant upheaval and starting over somewhere else. also, lmao re: no baldness or shortness in the orb.
I am excited for the LW and this new chapter, and I think from her letter, she will be a great storyteller.
People's good qualities and bad qualities are usually two sides of the same coin. Someone who is good at planning things will inevitably be a bit bossy and prescriptive about your takeout order. It's the same energy. Someone who is chill and easy to get along with and forgiving will sometimes be annoyingly passive about something they should stand up for. That's also the same energy.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what Polly is saying here is that your chronic dissatisfaction and your desire to write and draw ARE THE SAME ENERGY. A creative person wants something to exist that doesn't exist yet. That's the drive to create. The question is, how do you turn that energy into a force that fuels your creative practice instead of a force that tears your life apart over and over. Polly gives a lot of good, specific advice here about grounding yourself in present-tense reality while also working on very specific, strange, labor-intensive writing/art projects. This is the way.
Starting a project is the hardest part because you're transitioning from glowing orb fantasy to gritty reality. I think that's why Polly recommends staying grounded in your sensory and emotional reality of daily life. If you have a place to stand in reality, and if you feel comfortable in reality, that's the place where you can welcome the art projects into real life. Making something is like opening a portal from fantasy into reality, so you really have to have secure footing in both the unreal and real worlds.
For me it's easier to do this with drawing than with writing, because drawing feels more real. And it's easier for me to do it with clay than with drawing, because what's realer than dirt?? (I have to do an illustration job this month and I'm dreading starting, but after writing this comment I'm realizing it will be a lot easier for me if I'm using real paper instead of my iPad.)
"...your chronic dissatisfaction and your desire to write and draw ARE THE SAME ENERGY"
I have absolutely found this to be true
I am so grateful to read this letter and response, during this week when Wendell Berry died. If I put myself in the letter-writer's shoes, I probably don't want to hear from an old married lady coming into the comments to quote Wendell Berry. BUT. My father shared Berry's essay from Standing by Words -- "Poetry and Marriage: the Use of Old Forms" just before I got married and its proven to be a touchstone for me. The essential thesis of the essay is that limits -- the limits imposed by poetic forms, the limits imposed by marriage -- provide the grounding for fullness of life and creativity. The conclusion of the essay I have also seen quoted as a poem: "It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."
I don't mean to suggest that the LW will or should marry her current boyfriend, only that being on the precipice, perhaps, of "settling down" (yes, settling) is a beautiful and rich time of life, not the end creativity or adventure but an evolution to a new form of each.
This just HITS in all the right ways. My life circumstances are entirely different, and yet this is exactly what I needed to hear today! I already know I will be re-reading this one, many times.
Also: LOL this is so true! "There is zero baldness and shortness and awkwardness in the orb, because it’s ENTIRELY IMAGINARY."
I thought the letter-writer might like to know that I'm a writer who has spent forty - yes, FORTY! - years living in London, and yet I still spend far too much time wondering what my life would be like if I lived in Brooklyn, or LA, or Berlin, or wherever. Not Fuckyville, though, never Fuckyville.
Also, this, a thousand percent: " If he weren’t a symbol, if he were real, he would be far less interesting to you. It’s impossible for you to believe that, I know, but believe it anyway." How quickly the mystique wears off when this person becomes more real!
I think 30 is the perfect time to start writing! I also spent many years adventuring and experimenting and traveling, and now I’ve found that having a steady home, relationships, and routine is actually really conducive to the creative process. I was thinking about the part in the Artists’s Way, where Julia Cameron talks about frustrated artists, who subconsciously create a lot of friction and drama in their personal lives to avoid creating. As Polly says, writing is excruciatingly hard and requires a lot of consistent effort. I think sometimes we have to choose if we want to live out the drama in our creative lives or in the constant upheaval and starting over somewhere else. also, lmao re: no baldness or shortness in the orb.
I am excited for the LW and this new chapter, and I think from her letter, she will be a great storyteller.
I've dated both of these guys.
How did it go?
Still with the whiny one after 11 years.
sounds like a lucky guy