Embracing the Odyssey: A brief meditation on the writing process
TL;DR
The author reflects on the evolving challenges of writing, noting that what once felt liberating now feels burdened by self-awareness, doubt, and the pressure of proving worth in a capitalistic, results-driven society.
Modern expectations of literature, influenced by superficial marketing and social media, have skewed perceptions of reading and writing, leading many to confuse simplicity with shallowness, and self-indulgence with meaningful expression.
True art, the author argues, is an imperfect, metaphorical pursuit that cannot be judged by financial returns or conventional success metrics; it requires embracing uncertainty and the possibility of failure.
To reclaim the transformative power of writing, the author believes we must let go of the fear of imperfection, allowing our creative journey to be guided by instinct rather than the pursuit of profit or external validation.
To me, the process of writing is an odyssey of uncertainty, equal parts liberating and despair-inducing. Advertised as an escapist practice, the art of the word, despite my sincerest efforts, inevitably chafes beneath the cinderblock duress of my self-awareness. Varying form and genre offers little relief in this regard: as long as letters and punctuation marks, digital or penned, are being thrown across the arctic mindscape of a blank page, I’m going to encounter some serious issues. So much so that, recently, I’ve come to wonder whether these frustrations aren’t just symptoms manifest of a deeper, more damning malignancy. Of a crucial, creative inadequacy—
What if I just don’t have the stuff?
Younger Ujwal wouldn’t have been able to relate. As a kid, I had no issues writing or reading habitually. Words poured in and out like freshwater from a relentless river. Finishing projects was also fairly de rigueur, and in the instances where a story or piece didn’t work out, I simply let it go and moved merrily on to the next one. The only new sentiment I accrued with age was a nagging concern for ‘worthwhileness’—for the predictability of reaping rewards commensurate with my investment of time. I can thank American culture for that.
As our modern world grows ever more capitalistic, we are increasingly deluged by a philosophy adulating maximized margins and R.O.I. (Return on Investment). Everything we do must be optimized for time and cost-effective profit, for material gain conspicuous and impressive enough for faceless spectators to validate it. The ghoul-brimmed, superficial perdition of social media only further advocates for living and existing in a third-person perspective. Dissenting from such a disposition typically invites sneering accusations of whimsicality and immaturity. But the enterprise of art can’t be squared with financial wagers like choosing a particular career, financing a car, or taking out a mortgage.
Art operates on the deepest, most complex gradient of consciousness, the ethereal realm toeing the source-wells of both dreams and intrigue: the mansion of Metaphor, wherein one literal thing can miraculously invoke another or several symbolic things. Attempt to express the essence of Hope, Redemption, Freedom, Loss, Liberation, or Beauty, and any one of us will invariably retreat to the empathic apparatus of aesthetics, to the metaphor–vehicles of painting, poetry, and song. Language is an atavistic, subliminal lasso, lashing out in a bid to capture concepts so intricate and nuanced they skate perennially beyond our definitional faculties. The very nature of metaphor digs and cuts violently to the gut of all that we think we know. Pinterest boards and modernist decor would have us indulge in an image of literature as leisure, a retirement pastime, which we enjoy on rainy days or in cozy cafés. However, this brand of marketing, too, contributes to the literary issue.
Our expectations for reading and writing have skewed to confuse stupidity for simplicity, shallowness for groundedness, masturbation for vicarious passion, and impotence for eloquence. We stopped appreciating reading and writing as the mighty crucible, the epic expedition, the fiery, celestial forge from which we emerge transformed and blazingly reborn. Novelist Robert Bolaño probably addressed the dilemma best in his magnum opus, 2666:
“He chose The Metamorphosis over The Trial, he chose Bartleby over Moby-Dick, he chose A Simple Heart over Bouvard and Pecuchet, and A Christmas Carol over A Tale of Two Cities or The Pickwick Papers. What a sad paradox, thought Amalfitano. Now even bookish pharmacists are afraid to take on the great, imperfect, torrential works, books that blaze paths into the unknown. They choose the perfect exercises of the great masters. Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.”
If we are to once again blaze paths into the unknown, to surf the torrent of Truth, and unfetter ourselves from the economic anxiety of ‘worthwhileness’, we must reconcile with imperfection. We must make peace with committing long hours that may very well amount to the subpar. We must wholeheartedly embrace the confusion and shipwrecked condition of the aesthetic mission, dwelling not in the shadow of an exultation contingent upon profitability, but in the journey, however stormy, of the creationary process itself.
Of course, finishing and critiquing are necessary elements in the grand scheme of artistic invention. But it’s precisely these vital actions that embracing the odyssey of writing enables us to take. Without the hovering albatross of worthwhileness, our creative gumption is free to sail and swim as it pleases. We can create, remake, relinquish, and finish projects according to the compass of our instincts. A story we fail to write when we are thirty may only be waiting for the riper cognizance of our forty-year-old self. Perhaps we need to read more, experience more, shoulder less, worry less—the potential extenuations are endless.
What ultimately matters, in the art of the word, is simply that we try, and that our intentions are honest. In doing so, we may at least revel in the thunder and thrill of the voyage, in the glimmering darkness of the unraveling uncharted.
What more can explorers of the Secret and the Soul ask for?