Not Feeling Good Enough

by Victoria Mastropietro      

      A big problem that I, and many other writers, face is not feeling good enough. You can write something beautiful and elegant and then turn around and read something ten times better. Suddenly you’re no longer a writer, you’re only a person with a word document opened on your laptop. You then no longer want to write. What’s the point? You aren’t even that good anyway. Then someone you love tells you “No, you’re fantastic” and you don’t believe him or her. I mean, they love, of course they’ll lie to you. Sooner or later you realize that you have to keep writing, because you love it, or because it’s the only thing you can do. Either way you keep on going and you move on, but the feelings never really leave.

         When I first started in our Creative Writing class and I had to read all of these articles about writing and life I got nervous. Everything seemed so difficult. I found myself thinking back to my Literature and Culture teacher who told the class that only three people in Canada make a living off their creative writing alone. How on earth could I make it if so many people have failed before me? On top of that all of the articles we read seemed kind of depressing. There was a lot of “It’s really difficult to get published” and “Don’t count on actually making money”.

I relayed my concerns to a close friend and she shrugged. She said “Maybe they’re just trying to weed out the fakes, the people who can’t handle the pressure or don’t want to”. That really hit me and I think she may be right. I have a cousin that got into Fine Arts. She dropped out quickly because it was too competitive. I remember thinking “But if you love it, who cares? You have to work hard to do what you love”. Now I understand her dread, but I’m unwilling to give up.  I may not be the best, but is there ever really a “best”?

As the class progressed I got more and more nervous. I started to read the works of those around me and I felt absolutely useless. Then I saw something Andy Warhol said, “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding make even more art”. This really stuck with me. It’s something I tell myself whenever I start a project or feel like I’m just not good. I am an artist, not a critic. I want to make things that are beautiful, but beauty is subjective. I wish I could say that I found the cure, that I know that one little thing that will make you feel like you are amazing (because chances are you are). But I don’t. I don’t think I ever will. And I recently realized that I don’t think I need to. There are days when I’ll feel like I’m the worst writer to walk the earth, and all I need to do is use that horrible emotion to keep on writing.