The Nemesis
For the last few weeks I’ve been getting to know an old nemesis. If you had to name this entity it would diminish its power, so I will leave the name out for now. Let me just say that it sits on my shoulder and mumbles in my ear. Don’t use that word; it won’t work. Where is the transition here? No, that isn’t it at all. When my nemesis has the upper hand I am wordless and unhappy.
Through the years I have assembled some ammunition. This blog, for instance; it flies beneath the radar screen. The nemesis lets it go. And sometimes in the morning I can work happily before the nemesis awakes. But long about midday it will set in with all its niggling, nagging power. Often I push through it. Sometimes I give up and do something else.
Looking in some writing books the other day I came across a passage that helps. It’s from The Forest for the Trees by writer, editor and agent Betsy Lerner. “I won’t say there’s no such thing as a natural talent, but after working with many authors over the years, I can offer a few observations: having natural ability doesn’t seem to make writing any easier (and sometimes makes it more difficult); having all the feeling in the world will not ensure the effective communication of feeling on the page; and finally, the degree of one’s perseverance is the best predictor of success.”
It’s that last point that I cling to most. The nemesis doesn’t like to hear it. The nemesis counts on my giving up. And so, just to spite it, I won’t.
2 thoughts on “The Nemesis”
It's edging toward spring (except here in the Northwest), so obviously I've been thinking about this one for a while. The entry is a little unnerving. It has a hidden layer, an undercurrent. Maybe it's just me. But isn't that what this reaching through language is about, that it may be something about me?
The photo of the dusty tools could represent getting back to work, spade work, grinding it out with the craft of writing. But that wasn't how I interpreted it at first. I saw everything not-writing. It was a seductive image of all the other duties of the responsible life, the muse of the checklist, a summons to upright conduct.
But acts of imagination are otherwise. Writing is an arrogant act. For me the seduction of the shovels was an ambush. I was going to say, "For the writer in me…"
"The nemesis" is a true way of naming it. It poses, over and over, the killer question: How can you justify these time outs? How can you sacrifice precious others and hours for your solitary, self-absorbed enterprise? What good is it… are you? Your nemesis is the real you. Come on over…
At this point in life, knowing the state of the art and the publishing business and the void of Twitterscape and the insistent assaults on much that writers hold dear, I'm challenged. The nemesis is resonating for me. I'm in the process of asking myself what it's worth. What it has been worth.
This entry has pressed me for an answer. At least now I can pose the question.
How much of what forms our convictions, gives us perspective on our place in time, guides us to what we need to pass along, did not come to us through words?
It's been a while since I wrote this entry. At the time, I was struggling to finish an essay about place, a subject that has bedeviled me for years. The tools are the work of writing, the push against the doubts, inadequacies and distractions, whether real or imagined.
I re-read this post today (the essay completed but not at all what I hoped it would be) and think about the months that have intervened (a difficult time, when raising a teenager has taken all I have) and feel much as I think you do. I ask myself why it matters. It's people that matter most.
Spring is helping. Virginia is at its best now. I want to record the way it feels to come alive again.
But I often ask myself, Is this just for me, for ego? Or is there some responsibility to respond and return to others some fraction of what has come to me (as you say in your last paragraph) through the written word?
I think there is, but there's a wood pile outside, and it's beckoning…