Lynch the Luminary: on not thinking about reception

Nude photography — male and female — is now so overdone it's almost bankrupt imagery. Did you want to do something different with it?

That's the wrong way to think. The only good way is to get a thrill with an idea and then go out and do it. If you start thinking about how it's going to be received, or if you're going to be able to do something new, you're worrying about the wrong thing.

I'm reminded of the sound writing advice David Sedaris gave in a New Yorker Q&A:

I started writing one afternoon when I was twenty, and ever since then I have written every day. At first I had to force myself. Then it became part of my identity, and I did it without thinking. It helped to have jobs that involved running around, pushing things like dish carts and wheelbarrows. It would be hard to sit at a desk all day, and then come to sit at another desk.

Also, it helps to abandon hope. If I sit at my computer, determined to write a New Yorker story I won’t get beyond the first sentence. It’s better to put no pressure on it. What would happen if I followed the previous sentence with this one, I’ll think. If the eighth draft is torture, the first should be fun. At least if you’re writing humor.

This is actually sound advice not just for writing but for stuff-doing in general: (a) form a habit so that the thing you want to do becomes part of what you are and (b) expect nothing. The moment I try to create anything under the burden of expectations of what it must turn out to be, the "this isn't that" reflex kicks in, and hard.

As a side note, the notion that one must "force" oneself to do stuff has gained currency, but I'm unsure how I feel about it. On one hand, great excitement about work has a way of showing up, positively, in the work itself. On the other hand, high intrinsic motivation, a fickle, unpredictable beast, must never be relied upon. I might suggest doing whatever you're just thrilled enough about to be consistently sort of interested — as opposed to occasionally overwhelmingly interested — in pursuing. I once read a blog-commenter somewhere ask an established writer, "What do I do when I know I should write but I donwanna [sic] ?" My own response: you donwanna be a writer.

Comments

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