Hi Arabelle, I just wanted to say that I really admire you and your work. You've been a huge inspiration to me, especially as a queer girl. I was wondering if you have any advice about overcoming feelings of mediocrity abt one's art/ accomplishments?
Hi! Thanks. This is such a good and important question I got out of bed to write this on my computer lol.
First: I think it’s important to understand – and embrace – the fact that mediocrity comes with the territory of creating. Like, yeah, your entire body of work might be shit for years. This is just fact, please understand this, that there is a gap in creating and you only overcome it with persistence and some talent but mostly just persistence. I think imposter syndrome and these feelings of doubt and mediocrity are unavoidable no matter how accomplished you are, how established. I have conversations with my much more famous friends about imposter syndrome literally all the time. When an emmy winner or grammy winner or pulitzer winner tells you they feel kind of whatever, or unsure, you know, like a normal human being, we realize with both joy and bitter terror that: talented people! They’re just as fucked as us! Fuck, but also hoorah.
That being said. i don’t think you should spend too much time dwelling on being the best, or mediocre, or the worse, or what ever. Try not to center your worth on a comparison with others. That doesn’t serve you. What serves you is being better than you were before. Know that it is a process you are still very much immersed in - you are not in the end of it, you are near the beginning, you have not done nearly all of what you are capable of and all you need at the point in time is to show up and keep trying, and failing, and succeeding, but mostly just keep doing it. Show up and see what comes when you try. Be open. What serves you is putting all that you can, into what you have, and seeing what comes from it. It is not up to you to consider: is this the best in the entire world? It is up to you to consider if this is as genuine and earnest a thing that is entirely yours. Is what you are creating something that feels like you? Just approaching that question is big, and hard, and humbling. And it leads to great work, and eliminates a lot of insincere bullshit anyone can do. What feels like an extension of yourself? What feels honest? That is so hard! That is the question! And the answer changes as you write it, and it keeps you working. And everything moves.
I want you to know I feel like garbage about almost everything I write as soon as I finish it - I feel so mortified when people come to me to tell me my writing changed them, that they dwelled on it, that it saved them, or when teachers tell me they’re adding me to their syllabi. Just writing that - I’m on syllabi! Plural! FUck! What the fuck! So I suppose what I’m trying to comfort you with is the reality that the questions of insecurity and fear of mediocrity don’t really go away, you just have to remember they don’t have to be all encompassing. Don’t let them stop you. You just need to keep showing up, ok? Please believe in what you are capable of, even if you don’t necessarily believe you’ve shown it all entirely. I certainly don’t! What keeps me writing and making things is knowing I have so much more to do, and prove. No one can do what I want to do the same way I can. I don’t think what I do is the first, the best, the most unique, I just know it is irreplaceable, irrevocably me, and that is enough for me to want to do it. I keep showing up.
Here are some quotes I return to honestly almost every day, I think they will help you too:
1. Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative, work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know that it’s normal and the important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you finish one piece. It’s only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take awhile. You just gotta fight your way through.— Ira Glass
2. “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.” - Martha Gellhorn
3. What James Baldwin advises young writers via The Paris Review: “Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lies all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.”
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