Guest Blogger Amanda McTigue . . .<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll confess with some dismay that contrary to the many uplifting articles and memoirs I have read about the serenity of older age, it continues to elude me. Serenity, that is, not the march of years across my face, kneecaps and pelvic floor muscles.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m looking forward to any later-in-life serenity that may come my way. Indeed, I practice all kinds of meditations and mantras and daily exercises, etc., to invite it in. But my emotional set point tends to be what it\u2019s always been: low-level (self)doubt.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the place whence I write. If that\u2019s true for you, let me offer some slant wisdom here from some fellow artists. Take Tatiana Maslany. You may have seen her in a futuristic TV show called \u201cOrphan Black\u201d in which she plays (gorgeously!) multiple clones of herself. She\u2019s a hell of a young actor, and here she quotes one of the great dancer\/choreographers, Martha Graham:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not your business to determine how good [your work] is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open\u2026 There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching, and makes us more alive than the others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Snaps to Ms. Graham and Ms. Maslany.<\/p>\n
Or here\u2019s a writer I love, Peter Schjeldahl, describing the work of the painter Albert Oehlen. I know next to nothing about the visual arts, but I always look for Mr. Schjeldahl\u2019s columns in The New Yorker because I love the ways in which he helps me see things:<\/p>\n
\u201cOehlen\u2019s process has evinced endless sorts of borderline-desperate improvisation\u2014until a painting isn\u2019t finished, exactly, but somehow beyond further aid. He told me, \u2018People don\u2019t realize that when you are working on a painting, every day you are seeing something awful.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDivine dissatisfaction.\u201d \u201cBlessed unrest.\u201d \u201cBeyond further aid.\u201d These are my kinds of people.<\/p>\n
Good work, great work, and certainly awful work: it all comes out of whatever souls we\u2019ve been assigned. While I wait for serenity to grace my days, I write. Often the moments before addressing the page are filled with dread, needless dread, yes, but it\u2019s my dread. It doesn’t matter. I write. This is something I\u2019ve taught myself. You can too. When my unrest isn\u2019t \u201cblessed,\u201d my rule is, write it, don\u2019t read it. Not yet. If I think things need fixing, they\u2019ll get fixed later, but in the moment, I write. I slap it down. Just the way I\u2019m doing here about slapping it down.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll cop to a suspicion I carry\u2014really something closer to superstition. I wonder whether my unrest is precisely what makes me productive. You may wonder the same. But let\u2019s let the rest of the world chatter over that one, while we get to the page.<\/p>\n
Confident or not, joyous or dread-filled, I\u2019m going to go ahead and climb into the boat I keep tethered right here at my desk. I\u2019m going to untie that hitch and launch. Some days I motor out. Some days I just drift. But out I go, untethered to how I feel about the work. The feelings may come with me, or not. Either way. Out we go. So be it. I\u2019m writing.<\/p>\n
Citations:<\/p>\n
Dickinson, Emily. Tell all the truth but tell it slant. Poem #1263.<\/p>\n
Loofbourow, Lili. (2015, April 5). Anywoman. The New York Times<\/p>\n
Schjeldahl, Peter. (2015, June 22). Painting\u2019s Point Man. The New Yorker<\/p>\n
Amanda will be the March 17 Writers Forum<\/a> Presenter: Writing Emotion: How Do You Catch a Cloud and Pin it Down?<\/p>\n Amanda’s novel,\u00a0Going to Solace<\/em><\/a>, was cited by public radio KRCB\u2019s\u00a0literary program \u201cWord by Word\u201d as a Best Read of 2012. She holds the West Side Stories Petaluma <\/a>championship for live storytelling (2013 and 2014). She also makes regular appearances with the monthly \u201cGet Lit\u201d gathering at Petaluma’s Corkscrew Wine Bar. She’s just returned from Cuba\u00a0where she was researching her second novel. In 2016-17, she’ll be directing “The Magic Flute” at Sonoma State University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Guest Blogger Amanda McTigue . . . I\u2019ll confess with some dismay that contrary to the many uplifting articles and memoirs I have read about the serenity of older age, it continues to elude me. Serenity, that is, not the march of years across my face, kneecaps and pelvic floor muscles. I\u2019m looking forward to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[104],"tags":[321,322,273,343],"class_list":["post-5186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","tag-amanda-mctigue","tag-going-to-solace","tag-west-side-stories-petaluma","tag-writers-forum"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-1lE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5186"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5199,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5186\/revisions\/5199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}