{"id":8462,"date":"2019-09-05T01:00:23","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T08:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/?p=8462"},"modified":"2019-09-04T15:51:20","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T22:51:20","slug":"david-moldawer-has-a-unique-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/david-moldawer-has-a-unique-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"David Moldawer has a unique perspective . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I am delighted to recently \u201cmeet\u201d today\u2019s guest blogger, David Moldawer<\/a>, through a friend\u2019s recommendation of his newsletter, The Maven Game<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cgoing through the goop\u201d by David Moldawer <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just hold that happy thought, Peter!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Tinker Bell, Hook<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d always imagined a pupa as something straight out of the original\u00a0Transformer<\/em>s cartoon, the caterpillar sealing itself up in its chrysalis only to\u00a0[transform] into a beautiful butterfly. Turns out, no. The\u00a0caterpillar\u00a0actually digests itself, squirting enzymes throughout its own body to\u00a0dissolve\u00a0all its tissues. This goop is then assembled into a new insect. Thus the caterpillar doesn\u2019t transform; it transcends. Only through this sacrifice can the butterfly take shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve come to learn that I need order in my\nlife in order to function. Absolutely require it, in fact. Yet to write\nanything worthwhile, I must pass through one or more stages of disorder\u2014of\ngoop\u2014with my ideas jumbling together and coming apart and turning inside-out in\nextraordinarily uncomfortable ways. I think this is why messy thinkers are so\ncreative and prolific. They\u2019re comfortable working with goop. Not me. I hate\nit. But when I refuse to acknowledge the necessity of the goop stage, I become\ninescapably blocked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I say this as much to myself as I do to\nyou: There is no creative work without a goop stage.<\/em> Likewise,\nno creative career. You, too, must become goop in order to fly, not just once\nbut over and over again throughout your working life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or you could just stop creating altogether. I\nstill think about law school now and then. I really don\u2019t like goop and I don\u2019t\nthink I ever will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I raise this in regard to last week\u2019s essay\u00a0on having the courage to plan your entire writing career out like an opera singer.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than a decade ago, The Girl with\nthe Dragon Tattoo<\/em> was published and became an international\nphenomenon. To date, nearly 100 million copies of the book and its sequels have\nbeen sold worldwide. Dragon Tattoo<\/em> wasn\u2019t to my taste, but I\nstill found myself admiring the author, Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson. The\nguy had vision<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Larsson embarked on writing his Millennium\n\u201ctrilogy\u201d (he actually had a ten-book series in mind) with absolute confidence\nin its eventual success. His professional experience had been entirely rooted\nin journalism\u2014he\u2019d written some short stories as a teenager\u2014but he told friends\nhe was certain<\/em> the books he was writing would not only find an\naudience but make him rich to boot. Were it not for his sudden, if not\nshocking, heart attack at fifty\u2014according to Wikipedia, \u201chis diet largely\nconsisted of cigarettes, processed food and copious amounts of coffee\u201d\u2014Larsson\nwould have far exceeded his ambitious goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though he may not have used the Swedish\nversion of the term, Larsson had decided to write potboilers. In \u201cthe\nold-fashioned days,\u201d as my daughter likes to call the past, authors were\nsometimes forced to lower themselves to writing books with commercial\npotential. This kind of book was called a potboiler because it was intended to\n\u201cboil one\u2019s pot,\u201d i.e. pay the author\u2019s daily living expenses so they could\nwrite \u201creal\u201d books, i.e. the artsy kind most people don\u2019t want to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Isn\u2019t that funny? Can you imagine knowing how\nto sit down and write a book guaranteed to make a lot of money and doing so\nonly under duress? Today, nobody knows how to do that!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the thing about Larsson: He\u2019d nearly\ncompleted the third book before he found a willing publisher for the first\none. That\u2019s<\/em> confidence. That is exactly the kind of long-term\nthinking I advocated in last week\u2019s essay. Larsson could have stopped working\non the series after finishing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo<\/em>,\ninvesting all his energy into finding a publisher or simply waiting for\napproval to come to him, as so many would-be authors tend to do. Instead, he\nkept working, kept executing on his plan. More goop. He knew, or allowed\nhimself to feel, that success was inevitable. As a result, he felt no need to\nspare himself any effort. He had no fear of that universally dreaded fate:\nworking on a project that doesn\u2019t end up succeeding in the end. (Isn\u2019t that the\nreal terror lurking in every blocked writer? \u201cWasted effort\u201d?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In retrospect, of course, Larsson\u2019s second and\nthird book would never have been written had he waited, but even if he\u2019d had\nmany years ahead of him, putting his project on hold because of any<\/em> external\ncircumstance would likely have sapped the precious motive energy at the heart\nof it, the kernel driving the books in his own mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ideas just don\u2019t age well, people. When have\nyou ever looked back at a scribbled note from more than a few months ago and\nthought, \u201cHey, I can use this. Glad I held onto it.\u201d More often than not, it\u2019s\n\u201cI can\u2019t believe I thought that way back in May. How embarrassing. I\u2019ll have to\neat this paper to hide the evidence.\u201d Use it or lose it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, creative seeds grow to all sizes.\nOne idea is just a pyrite nugget; another is a vein of gold so deep it threads\nthe roots of the earth. Antiheroine Lisbeth Salander runs deep enough that\nanother Swedish journalist, David Lagercrantz, is continuing the series\nhimself with the permission of Larsson\u2019s estate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think of how many ideas of similar potential\nnever achieved their true scope because their creators didn\u2019t have a signed\ncontract from the Universe promising them life everlasting to complete their\nwork under perfect conditions and blockbuster success at the end of the road.\nThink of how many great works only exist because their creators held onto their\nconfidence in the face of universal rejection or, worse, apathy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Personally, I never feel all that certain I\u2019m\neven going to finish what I start. The idea of beginning a project with full\nconfidence in its eventual success feels crazy to me. And yet, we have two\nchildren.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike, say, science or economics, writing\nseems to benefit from a kind of absolute self-confidence that simply has to be\ndecided, worn like a mantle. Yes, I will finish this<\/em>. Yes,\nit will turn out as well as I imagine, no matter how gruesome it appears along\nthe way<\/em>. Come what may, I\u2019m going through the goop.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Your work will suck until it doesn\u2019t. Always. To quote multiple characters in\u00a0Mission: Impossible\u2014Fallout<\/em>, \u201cThat\u2019s the job.\u201d There\u2019s nothing pretty going on inside a chrysalis, either. You don\u2019t judge the butterfly by its goop. All you can ever really do is\u00a0decide<\/em>\u00a0to have full confidence in your ability to wrest order from chaos. As Tinker Bell tells Peter Pan, the trick is to hold onto that happy thought. Otherwise, you\u2019re going to eat dirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About David Moldawer<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

David spent over a decade as a book editor at a slew\u00a0of\u00a0New York publishing houses including St. Martin\u2019s Press, McGraw-Hill, and Penguin\u2019s prestigious Portfolio business imprint, acquiring and editing bestselling nonfiction in the areas of business, technology, health, and memoir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, he is an independent writer, editor, and creator of the Maven Game<\/a>, a newsletter for experts, authors, publishers, and agents on making ideas and knowledge public\u2014writing, speaking, sharing\u2014without hating yourself in the morning. Sign up\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0for a new issue of the Maven Game every few weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am delighted to recently \u201cmeet\u201d today\u2019s guest blogger, David Moldawer, through a friend\u2019s recommendation of his newsletter, The Maven Game. \u201cgoing through the goop\u201d by David Moldawer Just hold that happy thought, Peter! \u2014Tinker Bell, Hook I\u2019d always imagined a pupa as something straight out of the original\u00a0Transformers cartoon, the caterpillar sealing itself up in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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":[1206,1207],"class_list":["post-8462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-bloggers","tag-david-moldawer","tag-the-maven-game"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p43Dj8-2cu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8462","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=8462"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8466,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8462\/revisions\/8466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewritespot.us\/marlenecullenblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}