A Selfless Art

I have been working on A Selfless Art for three years, thinking, reading and writing. I have been turning in circles for three years, starting, stopping, starting again. I understood why when I read these words by Stephen Nachmanovitch: 

The muse proposes, the editor disposes. The editor criticizes, shapes and organizes the raw material that the free play of the muse has generated. If, however, the editor precedes rather than follows the muse, we have trouble. The artist judges the work before there is yet anything to judge: this produces a blockage or paralysis. The muse gets edited right out of existence.

Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play, (1990/2024)

Last week I had begun a new file: ‘A Selfless Art 6’. I told myself that I would just write and see where I got to. I would not worry about structure or organisation, which has so often been my starting point, and in which I took unnecessary pride. I had got to Nachmanovitch’s idea by myself, but it took his words before I could understand it. That’s so often the way with reading: the other writer’s words tell you what you know without knowing it. 

My skill as an editor was another thing I took pride in. Not only of my own work, but of other’s, especially my late mother, who was a gifted translator, historian and memoirist. It was the computer that made me an editor. Before then I typed my work on an Olivetti portable, a lovely, reliable machine my father gave me. I liked it because type made me believe in my words in a way that my handwriting could not. I would write directly on the typewriter, review and correct by hand, and then type a final version. It was too tedious to type out several drafts.

But computers make it so easy to revise and change, to judge my work before it’s even finished. I have been writing a book about my father, my grandfather and the Shoah for more than 30 years but it’s truer to say that I have been editing that book. Each time I sit down to continue, I re-read what I have written and change it. I think it’s better than it was when I began: I’m older and I have done much more research than I had. But the constant editing – judging – gets in the way of writing. It’s easier and it gives the illusion I’m making progress. But I’m not: I should be writing, unconcerned about whether it’s any good, not caring what anyone will think, allowing my creative imagination free rein. There will always be a need for editing, and time too. But as Nachmanovitch says so wisely,  if I judge too soon, ‘The muse gets edited right out of existence’.

So I have abandoned ‘A Selfless Art 6’ and begin ‘A Selfless Art 7’, assembling everything I have written so far, 20,000 or 3,000 words, many of which will turn out to be poor or not to belong in this book at all. But I will make that judgement later, when it is the editor’s turn. Until then, I will trust the muse – indeed, I have an idea for how to free her from the bonds in which she has been caught – and write, whatever comes. Just as I have written this, and not edited it at all.