CREATING OURSELVES AS WORKS OF ART
– or – Telling the Mental Monkey-Bullies to Go Suck Eggs
Have you ever read something so fan-DAMN-tastic that you thought to yourself, Well, Self, that’s it. Hang up your hat because you will never write anything that good. The cheerleader/ yoga teacher/ mom/ friend/ editor in me says to just love that kind of negative self-doubt right on into submission. But the realist in me, the one who had that reaction just this very week, to one of your chapbook submissions by the way, knows that sometimes we do harbor those types of thoughts. They’re real. They might be bullies, but bullies are real. They lurk and they threaten and they undermine our self-worth and they smell bad, but they’re very very real.
Internal bullies can be even more menacing than the average playground variety, because they’re the monkeys that live in our own minds. They chatter an endless racket, they make messes on our mental desktops, sometimes they even throw unmentionable things that definitely should not be thrown. They can scribble out perfectly decent sentences for no good reason, suck up valuable time, and sabotage all our good intentions. But the one thing these interior little beasties cannot do is see themselves in the mirror.
The next time you happen upon a piece of writing that brings you to your knees and makes you cringe at the thought that you ever even deigned to call yourself a writer, promise me you will do two things:
Number One) call your mother. Or your bestie, or that professor who took an interest in you, or that someone younger who has always looked up to you. Your boyfriend/ girlfriend/ lover/ spouse or one of each. Call that person in your life who is your best cheerleader and just ask for some cheer. And when they tell you how much they believe in you, how awesome you are, that you hung the moon and everything you’ve ever written deserves prizes and fame, just shut up and listen.
Number Two) walk to the bathroom and stare at yourself in the mirror. Practice holding eye contact with yourself while saying, I am a writer. Say it until you believe it. Own it. You are a writer and you are the best effing writer who has ever walked in your skin and breathed with your lungs and inhabited your life and you are the only person in the world who can write your story.
Did you notice that while you were doing all that mirror work, there was no one else standing there beside you? Well, your cheerleader(s) were there in spirit, but the bullies had all turned tail and gotten the hell outta there. They know you mean business, and they hate this kind of pride and confidence. Self-assertion is the mental monkey-bully’s kryptonite. By looking in the mirror, by taking back your writerly identity, by acknowledging to yourself that you DO have what it takes to write what only you can, you can bring those pesky jerk-offs to their knees.
The mirror not only shows you your true self, but the self that is there for its own creation. Create for yourself what only you can create. YOU are the artist and YOU are the work of art.
