Creative Existential Dread

I'm shit, my art is shit

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The air is hot and thick in the midwest, hazy from the wildfires in Canada. All I can stand are a few minutes on the porch before the smoky air paired with the dense humidity pushes me indoors where I oscillate between feeling frozen (a privilege) and needing to thaw outside.

Walking to the car it’s as if I’m wearing my smudged glasses and I cannot get them clean. A claustrophobia I want to wipe away but cannot.

Yesterday someone drove into a transformer and knocked out the power for 600 people on the west side of town. An accident, a possible medical emergency. My father happened to be on the street in the aftermath and filmed it for the mayor. That’s how small this town can be sometimes, which is it’s own kind of claustrophobia.

Last week my novel generator ended after a year of meeting nearly every Wednesday for three hours. Last night to save myself from the dread of it being over, I saw The Invite with a friend. I had little knowledge of what the movie was about, and the experience was all the better for it. I was on the same ride as the characters, a ride that was funny and tense and sexy and heartfelt. It was a burst of art on that Wednesday night I would have otherwise missed.

Today I attempted to revise my novel. I moved some words around, fixed later inconsistencies, tried to think through what I needed to change in the final third, and was left with the distinct feeling that I am at the ‘I am shit, my art is shit’ part of the creative process and closed the document. Then I texted my pod-mates (the two writers I was paired with in the Novel Generator) and told them I thought my book was shit and I might just need to start over, and let them talk me out of that thought and remind me of what was working.

We talked about deadlines. How I’ve set a non-existent deadline for myself, how E. has as well. How the deadline is helpful but also a double-edge sword (as S. so deftly put it) because it applies pressure. Pressure that is sometimes good and helpful, but that on this week where I am exhausted and sad about the generator ending and the heat index is in the 100s and the air is soupy and every movement feels like a trudge and I’ve been tasked with keeping my neighbors garden alive (no rain, harsh afternoon sun) and my daughter is in camp (one of the few weeks of the summer she is), the pressure is not helpful, but instead stifling like the unclouded sun baking my body, turning my arms and chest and cheeks pink as if the heat lives in every pore.

And so I close the document and read Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth and delight in how it delivers on all its weirdness, how it really goes there and doesn’t leave anything on the table.

And then my roommate from Kenyon calls and reads me her poem that is filled with the whole month of June and talks of our time at Kenyon nestled in the cornfields, how it felt the way a home should feel, and my eyes well up and I feel so much gratitude for this past year, my year of no and expansiveness, of putting my writing first and taking it seriously and applying for things that felt out of reach, but then were not, and the people that it brought into my life. So that even though the words do not get written, the scenes do not get revised, I am reminded that I’m not doing this alone, that there are people waiting on the other line, ready to remind me that it is good, that it can be good, that I just have to keep going.

I loved this book so much that I was sad when it ended. Girl’s Girl does such a poignant job of reminding you of the closeness of friendships in your teens, how hard it is to navigate being a person and a friend, how you feel like you owe every explanation to your friends, like you must go through every first experience together otherwise you’re a traitor. It feels like a midwest summer, all hot and sticky and dewy, with endless days and ample time to overthink, so clearly its the perfection recommendation for this post.

Sonia Feldman is a beautiful writer and also happens to be a graduate of the Novel Generator I spoke about above (the literary world is also small) taught by Lynn Steger Strong, which is currently open to applications so if my sappy feelings towards it ending has piqued your interest you can learn more here.

I’ve been listening to the crumbs Gracie Abrams have given us (Look at My Life and Hit the Wall) and not so patiently awaiting her new album, Daughter from Hell, which comes out tonight. Both deal with creative existential dread so again: fitting.

"But, oh well, look at my life (Look at my life)
Bet you can't tell, but it's kind of a bad time
A new spiral every night (Every night, I)
Bawling my eyes out, no, but I'm so fine (Fine)"

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