I’m taking a drawing class at my local community college right now. And it’s a pure delight because I
1. know very little about drawing and
2. am eager to learn everything.
I sit among my fellow students, most of them half my age, a fusion of Buddy-the-Elf & Hermione energy, happily pasting collages and drawing objects badly during timed intervals, delighted not by the outcome, but the attempt. I am reclaiming an interest I abandoned at a young age. Like a 40-year-old learning to ride a bike for the first time: probably awkward for onlookers but thrilling for me.
I can acknowledge that the reason I’m having so much fun is that I don’t expect to be “good.” I’m entirely curious. Naive, even. Also, I don’t have to care about my grade. I’m okay with getting it wrong, with making “bad” art. Because I have no real attachment to making “good” art.
I can’t say this same thing about writing. Having recently finished my novel—that one I’ve been hammering away at for nearly a decade—I’m feeling frozen about the next thing. Like, whatever it is, it’s got to be GOOD. So then I’ve been doing nothing. Well, I’ve been imprisoning myself with perfectionism. Does that count as something?
I always tell my freshman comp students—hesitant writers with mostly bad experiences in writing classes—that the secret to good writing is not complex vocabulary or grammar or even intelligence. The secret is rewriting. And that means you have to write something in the first place. You have to open yourself up to bad writing. Or, as Anne Lamott famously terms it, Shitty First Drafts. The idea that “almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts.”
I think I’m nearly ready to take my own advice. To channel my drawing class energy and go at something with beginner’s mind. Not to brag, but I’m great at writing bad drafts.
Cheers,
Lacy
P.S. I keep seeing everywhere how there’s like 100 days til Christmas so maybe that’s where all my Buddy the Elf metaphors are coming from?
P.P.S. My drawing teacher literally said the other day when I had my hand up: I’d like to call on someone else. And I was equal parts embarrassed and proud.
P.P.P.S. I thought noob was spelled nube and when I looked it up, came upon this piece of masterful hilarity:
let it be bad (lessons from a noob)
Another great post! Made me smile. :)