"Are you ever scared of getting it wrong?"
All the time, and yet...
I’ve been going back through some of my old writing for a project I’m going to share more about soon. Stuff from well over a decade ago. And it’s been weirdly emotional, getting close to my past self and having the clarity to see what she was trying to do: to see her keep experimenting, grasping to do something real and not always getting there.
In digging back through the digital vaults, what stands out to me most is how little a lot of it sounds like me. Not entirely. There are moments, here and there, when I’ve laughed at some bit of description or dialogue because of how typically me a turn of phrase is. My voice, clear and pure and recognisable. But so much of it could have been written by someone else, a stranger from the past, and I can recognise that in some ways that’s inevitable. I’ve changed with time, like all of us. That version of me is long gone. But it’s disconcerting too, this mish-mash of the recognisable and not. That horror film trope of the voice-changer app. A voice you know as well as your own, with all its familiar lilts and tells, then suddenly – button pressed, switch flipped – Ghost Face, cheerleader, monster, minx. The sweet dulcet tones of a beloved best friend becoming a serial killer’s menacing growl. And the person on the other end of the phone, frozen with fear, everything falling away into surreal dream-like denial. What you thought was one thing is suddenly another. Nothing can be trusted and everything’s a lie.
I’m no longer sharing my writing on Substack, but you can read the rest over at my website.
Thank you so much for writing about this, Jane. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately...even fantasizing about going back and deleting my entire archive here on Substack except for the most recent posts. I won’t do that (I don’t think), but I cringe at myself when I revisit past writings. Sometimes for the content, sometimes for the style, sometimes for who I was and how I was showing up during that time.
Meanwhile, here in the present, I’m pretty much ALWAYS scared of getting it wrong. I mean, I keep writing anyway, but still.
Of course, I also love this quote from John Irving: “If you don't feel you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then what you’re doing probably isn’t very vital. If you don’t feel that you are writing somewhat over your head, why do it? If you don’t have some doubt of your authority to tell this story, then you’re not trying to tell enough.”
(I think I got the quote from Laura McKowen’s newsletter, quite some time ago.)
I recently gave my writing group a piece of my past work as an exercise in editing. One person said “ I don’t like it” only comment. Hilarious