Build & Destroy Your Ego
Work until you understand your greatness, then open yourself up to learning.
On Craft…
I was recently watching a video by the venerable Sean Tucker, wherein he described the creative journey through the lens of Carl Jung. He (Tucker) was speaking with specificity to his photography journey, but I wanted to extrapolate to our journey as writers. The key takeaway from this 20-minute talk was the building and destroying of ego so necessary to being a creative. In your body must live two feuding ideals, which you nurture at different times. At once, you must be the shit and not shit at all. It’s an interesting balancing act, to say the least.
When you begin your creative journey as a writer, the first hurdle is to gain confidence and understand your greatness. You’re probably going to hate everything you write when you begin, because you’ll be comparing yourself to the craft’s best. Hopefully you’re reading a lot, and, subsequently, wondering why your voice isn’t as powerful as the voice of those you’re studying. You’re meant to start defining yourself in these early stages—you’re meant to set insecurity aside and develop a real ego about yourself.
For the established writers here, think back to the high of your first few published pieces. Don’t you remember feeling like the best writer in the game, simply for getting your foot in the door? Didn’t that high carry your next few pieces, and inspire a hunger to keep going? Such is the point of developing your writer’s ego: It’s fuel. Getting past insecurity and stepping into the arena is a serious feat, and once you’ve accomplished that and feel genuinely good about yourself, it’s time to destroy that ego entirely.
You see, the ego only serves us for a moment. It’s there to help us get started and to help us begin refining our voice and establishing ourselves. Once we’ve a solid idea of where we’re headed and insecurity is tossed aside, it’s time to toss ego along with it. Open yourself up to broader and more rigorous learning. Remember, choose who you learn from, and humble yourself whenever possible. Just because you feel good about your writing… It never means the work is over. In fact, the work never ends. Welcome to writing!
Ego will never save you from critique. No one and nothing is beyond respectful reproach. Ego is important to development, but a death knell for refinement. Save your ego for when you’re feeling sorry for yourself as a piece becomes tricky, but remove it when you’re sitting down to read your peers. You are both nothing special and the most special; it’s all about choosing when to tap into what sphere of being. Most importantly, though, you must eventually destroy your ego to grow and learn, and become the writer you really strive to be.
Never forget who you are, and never let your head get too big for learning. All of writing is a balancing act, and we haven’t even gotten to the page yet in this dispatch. There are so many mental steps for writing to be truly meaningful. Finally, as I tend to say, before you even approach the page, ask yourself a series of probing questions about your relationship to writing. Discover where you’re at with your ego, and maybe prick that ego just a touch—let some air out. Ego serves you, then ego needs to be put to bed. Somewhere along that path, you find your own voice. That’s gold.