Storytellersunplugged

by Richard Steinberg

This month’s column is dedicated to the sacrifices of Staff Sgt. Michael J. Gabel, 30, of Crowley, La., Cpl. Joshua C. Blaney, 25, of Matthews, N.C., both of the 173rd Airborne Brigade; Chief Petty Officer Mark T. Carter, 27, of Fallbrook, Calif., a Navy SEAL; Cpl. Tanner J. O’Leary, 23, of Eagle Butte, S.D., Spc. Matthew K. Reece, 24, of Harrison, Ark. Both of the 82nd Airborne Division; Staff Sgt. Gregory L. Elam, 39, of Columbus, Ga. of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault); and Sgt. Steven C. Ganczewski, 22, of Niagara Falls, N.Y. of the 75th Ranger Regiment.

Thank you all.  May flights of angels sing you to you rest.

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt,” Sylvia Plath

Self-doubt and natural gas ovens in Sylvia’s case.

It’s immaterial if it was a suicidal gesture gone horribly wrong or a deliberate attempt to kill herself. The results were the same.  Dead is dead.

Silence is forever.

Chalk up another victim for the most prolific serial killer in the history of the arts.

Self-doubt.

I know this – without reciting the legions of other familiar names it has claimed – from personal experience.

Hello.  My name is Richard S., I am a New York Times and international best-selling writer, and I am a self-doubter.

I think it’s always been there to some extent; rising and falling like a maleficent tide at hard to time, but regular intervals.  By this I mean there have been times – years sometimes – when the condition lay dormant in me.  Times when my life has been filled with overwhelming successes (both real and perceived) and it seemed that every step I took was strong and true; in the right direction and with a bounce to it.

But there’ve been other times – dark nights of the soul, Ilario the Magnificent calls them – when it has plagued me to the point of paralysis.  When I knew beyond doubt that I had lost the ability to create (if I ever had it) and would never regain that so fragile gift and write productively again.

Glorious Glori (my first and greatest believer, throughout her life and still, in my heart, since her death) never wavered in her belief in me and my talent.  His Sartorial Splendor once answered my call with the words:  “Hello, you wonderful writer,” and has never vacillated in his faith in my gift; in me.  And The Reformed Sexual Rapscallion, at the depths of a particularly nasty bout of doubt, told me: “Some gifts you can’t lose.  Even if you try.  Even you!”

I have been blessed with friends and family that will not believe me when I tell them, very sincerely, that it’s over.  Men and women who just smile (the way you would at an idiot child that you love and want the best for) and sometimes shake their heads or chuckle with gentle amusement at playing the scene out again.  Then, ask me with a profound assurance:  “So, what are you going to work on tonight?”

And they’re always right.  It may not happen that night or the next, but I always return to the work.  It took almost four months the last time it got bad.  But the C.L.A.S.S. (Clear Lights Around Steinberg’s Stupidity) always forces me to rise to the top and set off again.

Some might call it masochism.

I call it love.

But, at least for a time, let me talk to those of you without (or who perceive they are without) those kind of ass-kickers whose belief is sometimes couched in a boot to the butt, sometimes by a smile, sometimes a tone of voice.

There are so many people out there who are struggling to figure it out on their own.  People fighting to find the slightest clue that they may be a writer as opposed to a creative typist.  People who, for whatever reason (true or not) believe they have no one around them who supports, encourages, nurtures, strengthens or gifts them with their belief.

It’s okay.

However large or missing the support system around you, there are actually dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of believers out there.  Each one of them have passed through their own unique version of your Hell.  Passed through . . .

. . . meaning somehow made it to the other side.

Alexandre Dumas, Bram Stoker, Jack Kerouac, Kawabata Yasunari, Anthony Trollope, John Dos Passos, Charlotte Bronte, Thomas Mann, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens, Murasaki Shikibu, Leo Tolstoy, Jane Austin, and Miguel de Cervantes all went through long periods of judging themselves failures.  Or lived throughout their lives believing they couldn’t cut it and never would.

But if they were right, if any of them were right, how is it that I’ve read ALL OF THEM over the years, decades, or centuries since their deaths?

Writing, almost by definition is the most solitary, most personally unforgiving gig there is.  Trust me on this.  A writer in a big family surrounded by dozens of party-favor friends, all of whom laugh at their efforts, make light of their calling, or worse still . . . ignore their blood-born work feels as alone as can be defined.  Abandoned almost beyond hope.

Ask Sylvia Plath.

Oh, that’s right, you can’t.  She put her young children to bed, placed wet towels under their bedroom door to protect them, and then made love to a gas pipe.

Oh, Sylvia; how I wish I had known you; could’ve been there for you.  I hope your pain is ended.  For I know that in your silence, ours is increased. 

You are a writer if you are reading this; or you’re at least exploring the possibilities of being a writer.  With extremely rare exceptions, you will ply your trade sitting with your imagination, your dreams, your demons, and your doubts.  That’s the conditions of work.  Get used to it, it never gets better.

But you are NOT alone.

I don’t know every one of my fellow Storytellers, but I know many of them (and most of their work) well enough to tell you this:

You are not alone.

We – all of us – are here with you.

None of us write our monthly entries strictly out of the hope that it will better sell our work, or make us look more erudite.  We’re here because we’ve been there.

Been you.

Our souls are scarred; some with jagged wounds that deform the being beneath, some with slight blemishes that we can ignore most of the time.  Most of the time.  But all of us carry those wounds – not wounds, but badges of survival – brought about by exposing our heart and/or soul to the world.

And we’re still here.

As you will be too, if – big word there – if you have the guts to face the fire, ignore or employ the doubt, move forward or backward or sideways in your literary journey.  Any direction will do.

Any direction but standing still in fear or doubt.

“We {writers} have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies,” Roderick Thorp

False confidence can be as destructive as creative despair.  It can shut you down just as fast, lessen the depth of your work, and lead you to eventual ruin; and it is not what I argue for here today.

And I’m not advocating standing in the middle of the road.  Flattened squirrels and avaricious politicians dwell there.

“First write the words, then add the music,” Ilario the Magnificent once advised me.  “Only after that should you examine the work.  Examine, never judge.”  I can’t begin to recall how many times that advice has saved me from myself.

Please, from my heart and soul, remember that you are not alone.  I am here for you.  Dave Wilson, Janet Berliner, Thomas Sullivan, Elizabeth Massie, Richard Dansky, Stan Ridgley, Elizabeth Bear, and all of us here at SU are here for you.

As I believe that poor lost Sylvia Plath, in her way, is also.

We can not guarantee you will ever see your work in print; or that if you do, it will be appreciated by your readers.  Good, sometimes great, writers often remain unpublished, unknown, unread throughout their lives and beyond.  It’s sad, but it happens.

But we can guarantee you this much:  no one else can write what you have to say; what’s inside you, what reaches you.  The Universe craves your presence because of your uniqueness; so, write on.

If only for that awesome audience.

One last thing:

This begins Year Three of our journey together on the good ship Storytellers.  Junior Year.  “The Charm” year.  A journey which began with these words:

“I’m a fictioneer; sailing the high seas of ignorance, doubt, apostasy, and the occasional salvation (salvaged) moment.  I’m a writer – blessed to be so – and honored by the community of writers (as opposed to creative typists) around me.”

My journey continues.

This year I confront in this more than challenging forum the meat of the thing, the dark side; the often hysterically funny dark side (you’ll understand some of that next month) which makes up the guts of writing.

If, like me, you spend more time wishing yourself back to Oz, then you do trying to understand the stability of, and mechanisms responsible for, the growth of tornado vortices, let’s journey a time in each other’s company.

Until then, in all ways, always:

Believe!