Freeing Yourself from You Own Expectations
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve sent out a newsletter, but this morning I’m inspired to write one. In fact, I’m overall inspired.
About three years ago, I started writing an experimental novel called “Billy the Killer: A Grindr Western.” It was supposed to be, in part, a take-down of the role that trans people play in film and novels written by cis people. It was about a relentless trans serial killer who stalked cis men he met on Grindr. It took the format of three columns on the page, one for cis readers, one for trans readers, and a third where an unnamed critical commentator gave asides.
It was great fun at the beginning, thinking of how I should portray this story to all these audiences, and in this voice. But then, I found myself putting it aside for longer and longer periods of time. I found myself boxed in my by own experiments. I felt the work was flat and dull. I would never complete it.
Then it struck me. I was writing this book with the idea of it being read by an audience. By nature of the book, I had to think about those audiences. But what if I suddenly stopped caring about it ever being read by anyone? What if I decided that I would not write it towards being published, but towards my enjoyment?
So I did a complete shift in my writing. First I added a letter written by a squeaky clean stereotype of a detective who was looking for the serial killer, giving his character much more complexity. Then I decided that I was going to break format and do whatever the hell I wanted to do for the next hundred pages.
The revolutionary thing that happened for me in the midst of all this was that I stopped thinking about what the book would look like when I published it, who would read it, how it would be received. I’ve been guilty lately of letting the idea of publication seep into my workspace. Workspaces, studios, should be a place of creativity and enjoyment, not a place where you think of the outside world. Not a place where you think of the mechanisms of publication. It should be a place of freedom. I had boxed myself into a story and taken away my own freedom of exploration. Of course I was bored.
Anyway, I got rid of the idea of ever publishing this piece, and now it’s great fun again. I can’t recommend anything more than freeing yourself from the expectations you put on yourself, from the ideas of how your work will be received once it goes out the door of your studio. Play. Experiment. Have fun. Otherwise, what are we doing here?
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