Get Over Yourself, Writer

In my memoir Petals of Rain I talk about how writing helped me through traumatic times. I describe a moment in which I came to my keyboard with unbearable sorrow. I began typing. But it was not at all like typing. I was crying through my fingers. 

Writing sets me free.

The expression of my art is a mode of survival. So to write is not merely a privilege — it is a necessity.

But that’s not to say it’s easy. 

If creativity had an astrological sign, she might be a Gemini, because while she is mostly wonderful, she’s also complex. Fickle. The duality of creativity is what makes the writing practice so difficult. Or maybe I’m the only one who struggles to keep the words flowing? 

Sometimes writing is magical. But more often, it’s hard. 

Some days the muse is strong and my writing sparkles, and other days I scratch and claw at the page. In my many years of professional writing, I’ve learned how to charm my creativity. I take short breaks, read other things, channel the writers I love and work my way back to the topic. I chastise myself— “Sit up straight, Rica. Behave yourself, you heathen.”

Despite all the tricks I’ve learned and all the good things I glean from my writing practice, sometimes it just takes a toll.

Writing and Inevitable Rejection

Recently, a gentleman emailed the media company for which I work. His long-winded complaint about me felt incredibly personal, although I’ve never met the guy. He was upset about a typo he found in my story– a minor typo (two letters transposed). The mistake had escaped our publication’s rigorous editing process and I wondered how the man had found it at all. I imagined him, a little mad scientist with a high-tech typo detector in some some basement lab where he also built bombs and stirred poison in a cauldron. 

His email was condescending and cruel. It tore me down in ways it should not have. He talked about journalistic standards and the need for quality, accuracy and dignity in the workforce.

And all I could think was: a single typo.

I was angry, embarrassed, defensive. I read and reread his email. Each time I allowed his insults to become living organisms, parasites feeding on my psyche. Never mind the emails I got from readers who praised my work. Forget about the kudos I’d gotten from our media staff and so many others throughout my career. I was hyper focused on the critic. 

Why did that complete stranger have the power to affect me so deeply?

What kind of egomaniac am I anyway?

Why does it take seven compliments to counteract an insult? These questions taunted me. 

It took two days for the sting to subside. And in that time, I reminded myself that this struggle is visceral and primal in nature. The incessant need for approval, the fear of not being worthy, not being big enough to be seen or important enough to matter is real regardless of our profession, age or level of talent and skill. This is not a writer’s problem — it is a human problem. Because we are all a little cracked at our core.

We are all subject to occasional flailing in the great oceans of our failures and insecurities. Luckily for me, writing is the surest way back to shore, a buoy for which I am grateful — occasional insanity be damned.