Micki Cottam

               

Yesterday, I ventured alone the long drive from my home in Eagle Mountain, UT (N-Central Utah) to my Grand's house in St George (On the NV border), with my two younglings in tow (Evie, 3 + Remington, 6 months). A miracle occurred about a quarter of the way there when they both fell asleep at the same time. I turned off the radio and overhead DVD player that was looping "Tangled" and listened to the hum of the road and the air as it passed the sub-par sealant on the driver's door. It was glorious!

I started to think about ABNA (Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award) which I had entered my novel in the day the contest opened. The people I have met there are extraordinary and even when I'm not actively participating the forums, I love to lurk and read their hopes, fears, witty banter, and ravenous editing of eachother's prose. After a while of creeping through the threads, I began to feel that the snippets of insight I was granted into the writer's psyche presented a much larger theme that we all seemed to share. Carl Jung should have studied the collective subconscious of writer's minds because it is so fascinating!

As I drove through the high desert covered in snow, I began to explore the concept of writers and self-deprecation. ABNA has taught me that a VERY high percentage of authors are extremely self-deprecating when it comes to their writing, ability, and future of writing. Here are some of the types of things said on the ABNA boards.

• "I am a fraud." 
• "My writing is embarrassingly poor compared to everyone else here." 
• "I deserve to be rejected." 
• "I don't know if I will ever be good enough." 
• "You can't force talent and I'm not sure I have it." 

These sentiments oozed from the conversations I read. Maybe some of these writers were trying to be modest, but I feel that most of them are sincere because I know I have thought many of the same things.

I started to wonder why writers were so prone to this! Is this healthy or even needed? Do we need this to be moldable or do we make ourselves TOO moldable to suit other's tastes? I once heard an anecdote about raising children. The gist of it was, raising a child with the belief that they are exceptional will cultivate complacency not success.  While raising a child with belief that they can always be better will ensure exceptionalism. Are we writers simply taking ourselves to the back of the woodshed and giving ourselves a good beating to spurn us to do better or are we abusing ourselves and our craft?

I came across several articles today when I was doing a bit of reading on self-deprecation as it applies to writers. The article argues that a survey conducted found that writers are at greater risk for depression and suicide.

A NY Times article expounded,

"It is not surprising that these mood disorders seem most at home in the artistic mind. "The cognitive style of manic-depression overlaps with the creative temperament," Ms. Jamison said. Researchers have found that in a mildly manic state, subjects think more quickly, fluidly and originally. In a depressed state, subjects are self-critical and obsessive, an ideal frame of mind for revision and editing. "When we think of creative writers," Ms. Jamison said, "we think of boldness, sensitivity, restlessness, discontent; this is the manic-depressive temperament."

What do you think about this? Are you manic, self-deprecating, and discontent when your writing and editing is at your best? I don't think I am most of the time. Actually, I think I have to be in a very good mood to get my best writing! Manically happy maybe? Jury is still out on whether I am highly self-critical and obsessive while editing.

COMMENT