Mind Sprocket: The Back Page : A little something for your Sunday afternoon

Like most artists, writers struggle. They struggle to accept their gift for what it is; artists, even the greatest ones who transcend time, have wrestled with the giving up control in their crafts. I find such insights into past and present writer’s self-reflections incredibly revealing. Their sometimes inability to rationally accept the craft shows us how much writers and artists of various kinds are subject to the gift. What if they gave into these doubts?

I do not like the fact that I am successful; the plots that are still in my head are fretting with jealous irritation over the ones I have already put down in writing. It annoys me to think that all the stuff that is nonsense already written up while the good material is still sitting around in the warehouse like unsold inventory. Of course, there is a lot of exaggeration in my whining…but there is also a dole–a sizable dole–of truth…Either I am an idiot and conceited fool, or I am an organism capable of becoming a good writer. Everything I am writing at present bores me and leaves me indifferent, but everything that is still only in my head interests me, moves me, and excites me. From all of this I have concluded that everyone else is on the wrong track and I am the only one who knows the secret of what needs to be done. This is probably what most writers think. Anyhow, these are the kinds of issues that would drive the devil himself crazy. –Anton Chekhov