This is the cover picture from Prince’s album DIRTY MIND, the album the song WHEN YOU WERE MINE came from.
I’ve been in a writing hole. It’s been awful…my next book is killing me. Well not literally but definitely making me doubt and feel discouraged and even a little hopeless. This is par for the course with respect to the writing process, at least for me.
I keep remembering something that my writing teacher told me. It’s insight from the existential psychologist Rollo May who is famous, among other things, for his thoughts about the creative process. Apparently he says something to this effect: at any one time, there are many, many, many important ideas occurring on the planet. Ideas are not the problem. The problem is that far fewer people successfully wrestle with the gods in order to fully land these ideas into the world. May’s comforting and painful insight is that there is no avoiding the struggle. In putting it to words, he offers both comfort and inspiration. For me, the comfort is the notion that there are many other ideas percolating on the planet – if I fail, others will not. The inspiration is that I know I can win the wrestling match by staying persistent. keeping at it.
Last week, I was definitely being pinned by these gate-keeping gods. In fact, I would say they were sitting on my chest and laughing. Then I am not sure what happened. Perhaps I had an unconscious splash of hope or a deep knowing that the struggle is beside the point. I am not sure what it was, but I started to hear a larger landscape. The invisible weight that had me pinned started to lift.
Then I found a song by Prince – When You Were Mine. It felt like finding 20 bucks in my pocket. I almost never listen to disc 1 of Prince’s The Hits/B-Sides, only disc 2. But I was doing anything to get the gods off my chest, including listening to music that was long lost from my awareness. Suddenly enters When You Were Mine. It’s not even a good song. At core, it’s pop music, something that Rick Springfield might do, but intersecting with Prince’s extraordinary talent. Really fun, really stupid…it’s fantastic. If Prince can take a bee-bop melody and turns it into that….I can take my ideas and turn them into something.
I loved finding this song. I loved the feeling as I was coming out of the funk. I noticed full colors in the world again. I studied the transition from darker to lighter. It was like going from blurry vision to 20/20. Twenty buck in my pocket. Simple. Fun. Unexpected. Add some rhythm and life is good. If I am honest, I know that the gods are not wrestling me to stop my book. They are wrestling to ensure that the best version makes it into the world. I know, I know… we are supposed to accept that resistance is a necessary part of the refinement. It still sucks. In the meantime, I will do some dancing to Prince.