Finishing Up and Starting Again
Hello!
It’s been a while since you’ve received a newsletter from 500 Words. I’ve been working on things, work-work, fun-work, and also creative work, and finally, it’s time to let some of that stuff out.
Surrender
I’m closing in on publishing my science fiction novel Surrender. I’ve sent it around to readers, to a copyeditor who did some developmental work on the book, to a line editor who did more work on it, and I’ve just about made all the fixes and addressed all the notes. A couple more weeks and it will go to a proofreader for a final read. I’ve hired the designer, and when he starts coming up with ideas for the cover and interior, I’d like to share them with you here to get your thoughts. There will be a soft launch in November, and the official launch in February. I’ll be hiring a publicist who will probably insist that I do TikTok. But we’ll see about that.
You’d heard that writing a book is something like a marathon. You have to keep running, drink the little cups of water that they give you, and remember to breathe. There are times I am guilty of getting a little crabby when taking notes from editors. I can puff up and say, (in my head, of course), “I am the WRITER. I DECIDE.” Then I have to remind myself that the editors giving me notes are helping me see the book from a different perspective. They are good, not bad.
Your Performance Review
Strangely, I never have that feeling when hearing actors read lines that I’ve written. I’ve just about completed recording all ten episodes of Your Performance Review, an audio drama that is like a two-character play, only one person is a person and the other is a machine. I’m always thrilled to hear actors interpret my lines. Even when the AI actors (synthetic voices play some roles) mangle something, I like it.
So, who knows. These are collaborative arts, meaning that you have to work with other people to get it done. It sounds obvious, but gets complicated, depending on your attitude.
Speaking of interior dialog, I’d like to share this essay I wrote a while back. It’s about finishing a creative thing, and then not knowing what to do with all the emotions you stirred up to make that thing. I hope you enjoy it. See you next week.
By the way: You might discover a few typos in these newsletters as we go forward. I’m trying to write a little freer, more spontaneously, and that means errors will creep in. My bet is that it will be worth it.
The Empty Summit (500-Word Essay)
Finally, you have reached the top of the mountain. You steady yourself in the thin air. You squint to reduce the powerful light and look across states, nations, and continents. That snow you see on the neighboring peak? It’s twenty miles away as the crow flies. You whip off your oxygen mask to shout out your existence. Maybe you don’t do that because you could die. So you restrain yourself from whipping off your oxygen mask, and instead you just shout inside the mask, a hoarse bellow of celebration. Your mountaineering companions give the thumbs up. You all embrace. Your Sherpas smile, joining in, even through they have been here many times before.
I’d like to have that feeling when I finish a big project. But I don’t. I experience what I call the Empty Summit. Deflation. Oh, sure, I am elated when I get the draft out to the editor or upload the final mix on a podcast. I mean, after that, about twelve hours later, I come down with a bad case of now what?
I can trace this back to something my mother told me. She was an artist who was never satisfied with her work. She claimed that her dissatisfaction was good because it made her want to make the next sculpture. I subscribed to this theory for decades. You make something. You go up. Wait twelve hours. You go down. Then you want to make something else. It doesn’t really work that way, though. Creating from a pissed off kind of lack is not good. Better work comes from joy.
Artists, like anybody else, work best when they feel good. The Tortured Artist is a strangely attractive archetype, but I bet van Gogh would have preferred not to cut off his ear. He probably would have preferred to sell a couple of his paintings while he was alive. He would still be a great artist, just one in a better mood.
He used absinthe, a potent spirit, to medicate his psychotic episodes, and his doctor prescribed a medicine derived from a plant we know as foxglove. There’s a theory that he had seizures and his doctor attempted to medicate them with foxglove. Users of that medication reported a yellow cast over their vision. Have another look at van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” and take note of its yellowish vision of the world. His work was not the result of his unhappiness. He had to overcome his unhappiness to work.
I — all of us — would do well to steer away from the Tortured Artist. But how? Here’s my new theory. After reaching the summit, take a moment to rest, maybe a day, maybe a whole week. Write yourself a letter, like the one that I am writing to you now, and take a moment to receive the goodness of what you’ve done. Appreciate that you might not know the return on your creative investment for a good long while. But you did the work. And that’s good.
Thanks for reading,
Lee
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