The Ego of Creativity
My chief concern now was to see myself in print. It was as if I could not be quite satisfied that I was real until I could feed my ambition with these trivial glories, and my ancient selfishness was now matured and concentrated in this desire to see myself externalized in a public and printed and official self which I could admire at my ease. This is what I really believed in: reputation, success. I wanted to live in the eyes and the mouths and the minds of men.
-- Thomas Merton, Seven Storey Mountain, p.236
There is something so convincing about this sentiment. I wrote it down on first reading the book last fall, and came across the index card again today.
It was as if I could not be quite satisfied that I was real...
Something about this...I'm reminded of Hemingway once saying that the reason he wrote was to become immortal. I've actually finished books before, closed them, looked at the cover, perhaps run my fingers across the author's name, and thought:
"Now there is a successful person, a person made large. Their mental life has been concretized into this book form, and distributed to all these other people to read. Now, there are all these fabulous people (like myself) basking in the light of his ideas and the strength of his personality."
Implicit within that is a sense of envy, a desire that I could somehow become like that person--enlarged, "made real" in Merton's language. It's a valuable and helpful contrast to consider this in light of Anne Lamott's comments on being published:
Publication is not going to change your life or solve your problems. Publication will not make you more confident or more beautiful, and it will probably not make you any richer. (Bird by Bird, p.185)
Both Merton and Lamott's insights are welcome doses of reality, in a sense of knowing oneself and one's own desires. That's important because writing is all about being in touch with inner worlds. It's alarming, then, to think of pursuing creativity without at least being aware of this inner, hungry part of the soul, yearning to live in the eyes and the mouths and the minds of men.
Knowing it's there doesn't necessarily mean it leaves, but at least you are aware of its presence, and can act accordingly.
