Don't talk about it.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger      3 comments      link this post     



I was talking with a friend last night, and she asked me what my forlorn little NaNoWriMo novel was about. I was hesitant to tell her, but not because I wanted to withhold information from a friend. Instead, it has to do with not wanting to talk about what I'm doing.

I am frequently asked by people what I'm working on now, what new projects and ideas I'm busy with. I try as best as I can to answer without answering. This is one reason I struggle with writers' group. I try to let people know what I'm working on, as we are "required" to do in the group, without building up expectation or killing the interest inside of me. It's also connected to a lesson I learned in art critique sessions during college: never bring in unfinished work for a critique. By the time critique is over, you'll never want to touch the art again, and it will sit, unfinished. Everything you could have done or might have done or were thinking of doing will be talked into oblivion and that will be that.

If I tell someone about the new paintings I'm working on, and then, while painting, decide to go in a different direction or scrap it all together, I face the inevitable moment in the future where that person presses me on my reason why I did something different. Even if they are being friendly about it, the chore of explaining something that I don't even understand myself is exhausting.

I don't always know why I am led in a different direction, or why I sometimes stop a project and never return to it. The last thing I need is unintentional guilt by others asking what I'm doing and why I didn't do what I said I was going to do. Knowing that others know the specifics of what I'm working on binds and cripples me. I always do better work when I have no one aware of what I'm working on because then I have nothing to live up to, nothing to fulfill. Perhaps that is why I struggle so much with commissioned portraits.

The other problem I have when I tell someone what I'm working on in my writing or art is that, once I speak out the full project and give it life through verbal words, I lose interest. It feels like I already did it, that I gave it existence by merely talking about it and that there is no reason to actually carry the project out.

There is a strength in knowing that only I know and that I can take any path and even stop without anyone pointing out my inconsistencies or failure to finish what I said I was doing. I hate taking ideas out of the oven before they're done, before they're finished baking.

Ideas are fragile things. Don't overexpose them before they are ready and kill them in the process. Hemingway was right, at least for me. I lose it when I talk about it.

Labels: nanowrimo, writing

Copyright (c) Julie R. Neidlinger      11/07/2006 12:25:00 PM      (3) comments      Links to this post    

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