Hello self-sabotage nice to see you again!
The Muse Letter No. 54
Writing a text about self-sabotage while you are looking at the time putting yourself under pressure because this has to go out tomorrow so you the reader have another lovely Sunday morning reading the Muse Letter and telling myself things like: It has to be profound and it has to include that situation in the writers workshop you attended many years ago where you learned for the first time that the rules do not apply if something is brilliant enough and that often the rules do not apply anyway but still we keep holding on to them but first there has to be a beginning something that slides you into the problem, the complexity, the battle we all face every single time we sit down and try to create something and then realise that there is only one way which is to just: begin.
So let us start at the beginning while self-sabotage is having a seat at the table judging every single letter I type into this document, commenting on it like: And do we like that we addressed the reader in the beginning or did we find that a bit cheap? Or: And so we are characterising self-sabotage now as a person that is not me but an observer. How interesting?
The rules do not always apply. The first time I realised that, really realised that fact was at University in a writing workshop. The task was pretty clear to write a scene with a specific topic, to only use dialogue and three people. I did not feel compelled by the topic or the restrictions but I wanted to obey the rules to show how well I would follow guidance because I thought it was what I was supposed to do because in a way of course it was. After we were all finished we read our scenes out loud and the professor gave his feedback. Dreading the moment when I had to share my work knowing that it was: Yes obeying the rules but pretty basic I was surprised to see that most of the others had actually done something completely different: Writing monologues that talked about three people, writing a scene with just stage directions and almost no dialogue, not a hint of the prompt at all. They all had just done what they felt like doing in that moment, what they were good at anyway with the result that they were brilliant at it. While I was sitting there thinking I had to cut myself off.