The Bennett Madison Extravaganza

michelledean:

Being in Writing School with (mostly) men is a strange thing.  I like the men I am studying with, in large part, and two of them are Scandinavian to boot, always a plus.  But I often sit around and feel frustrated that I fundamentally lack their confidence.  This will maybe come as a surprise to those of you who know me only in text, and in the real world too, because “confidence” is a word that is, actually, quite often applied to me.  I would argue that’s because kind and capable editors have stripped all the prevaricating and “it seems to me” out of my written work before you see it.

For all the certainty I apparently project, I am always wondering, on some fundamental level, if I should be writing at all.  I always question, a priori, if what I have to say is worth saying.  

This is not an affliction most of the writing men I know much wrestle with.  (Cf. Mailer, Updike, Roth.)

I see what Michelle is saying here— and of course, confidence in a group like a class is its own thing— but I’m pretty sure that the only writers I know who don’t struggle with self-confidence and whether they “should” be writing are hacks. (People who worry constantly about being hacks are probably not hacks, or at least not hacks in spirit. At least, that’s what I try to reassure myself.)

It’s always seemed to me that being a successful creative person, at least in any kind of professional capacity, requires a probably diagnosable combo of an enormous ego in constant need of tending and a giant helping of sometimes-paralyzing self-doubt. Without the ego you’d never produce anything at all and without the self-doubt your work would probably just suck. A big part of the job I think is making sure these opposing forces are balanced in a semi-functional way, and that this balance is difficult to maintain is probably a  a good explanation for why so many creative people are absolutely bonkers.

Maybe by the self-doubt part of this recedes once a person reaches the level acclaim of Updike or Mailer or whatever; I don’t know cause I don’t think I’ve ever known a writer that famous. But I sort of doubt it, and I have a feeling there are plenty of great examples of super-famous writers, both men and women, who just sat around hating themselves all day and feeling like they’d never do anything good.