Writing as Autonomy
Metadata
Highlights
- Creativity is inherently anti-authoritarian. As in: to be successfully creative, you have to shed the part of yourself that desperately wants reassurance. It’s only then that you can escape cliche and escape paradigmatic thinking.
- I think a lot of people are dismissive of their best thoughts. They can’t put their observations on paper because they’ve already censored them in their mind. They don’t have confidence that what they see is real, because to believe that it’s real requires them to believe that their understanding of the world is as valid as anyone else’s.
- My desire to write is part of an enduring search for autonomy. By “autonomy” I mean the freedom to make work that I think is good on my own terms. The thing that holds me back is my need for certainty. This conflict is within all of us: longing for independence is always shadowed by the desire for guardrails, for safety, for the mind to be cordoned off and coddled.
- I find that when I write from life and not theory, I am most able create something that feels unpolluted by all the ideas I’ve consumed, all the things I endlessly regurgitate that never provide any catharsis. I think creative autonomy is best understood as honesty without confessionalism. I don’t have to, like, name everybody I’ve ever slept with or tell you which drug I snorted last Thursday in order to write something that’s honest. I can follow the ordinary movements of the mind without exploiting my trauma for engagement. But I have to be honest. I have to say what I think is true about the muddled, morally ambivalent world, about the decisions I make that feel messy and uncontrolled, maybe arbitrary and maybe not.
title: Writing as Autonomy
author: Ava
url: https://ava.substack.com/p/writing-as-autonomy
date: 2022-02-15
source: pocket
tags: media/articles
Writing as Autonomy
Metadata
Highlights
- Creativity is inherently anti-authoritarian. As in: to be successfully creative, you have to shed the part of yourself that desperately wants reassurance. It’s only then that you can escape cliche and escape paradigmatic thinking.
- I think a lot of people are dismissive of their best thoughts. They can’t put their observations on paper because they’ve already censored them in their mind. They don’t have confidence that what they see is real, because to believe that it’s real requires them to believe that their understanding of the world is as valid as anyone else’s.
- My desire to write is part of an enduring search for autonomy. By “autonomy” I mean the freedom to make work that I think is good on my own terms. The thing that holds me back is my need for certainty. This conflict is within all of us: longing for independence is always shadowed by the desire for guardrails, for safety, for the mind to be cordoned off and coddled.
- I find that when I write from life and not theory, I am most able create something that feels unpolluted by all the ideas I’ve consumed, all the things I endlessly regurgitate that never provide any catharsis. I think creative autonomy is best understood as honesty without confessionalism. I don’t have to, like, name everybody I’ve ever slept with or tell you which drug I snorted last Thursday in order to write something that’s honest. I can follow the ordinary movements of the mind without exploiting my trauma for engagement. But I have to be honest. I have to say what I think is true about the muddled, morally ambivalent world, about the decisions I make that feel messy and uncontrolled, maybe arbitrary and maybe not.
title: “Writing as Autonomy”
author: “Ava”
url: ”https://ava.substack.com/p/writing-as-autonomy”
date: 2023-12-19
source: pocket
tags: media/articles
Writing as Autonomy
Metadata
Highlights
- Creativity is inherently anti-authoritarian. As in: to be successfully creative, you have to shed the part of yourself that desperately wants reassurance. It’s only then that you can escape cliche and escape paradigmatic thinking.
- I think a lot of people are dismissive of their best thoughts. They can’t put their observations on paper because they’ve already censored them in their mind. They don’t have confidence that what they see is real, because to believe that it’s real requires them to believe that their understanding of the world is as valid as anyone else’s.
- My desire to write is part of an enduring search for autonomy. By “autonomy” I mean the freedom to make work that I think is good on my own terms. The thing that holds me back is my need for certainty. This conflict is within all of us: longing for independence is always shadowed by the desire for guardrails, for safety, for the mind to be cordoned off and coddled.
- I find that when I write from life and not theory, I am most able create something that feels unpolluted by all the ideas I’ve consumed, all the things I endlessly regurgitate that never provide any catharsis. I think creative autonomy is best understood as honesty without confessionalism. I don’t have to, like, name everybody I’ve ever slept with or tell you which drug I snorted last Thursday in order to write something that’s honest. I can follow the ordinary movements of the mind without exploiting my trauma for engagement. But I have to be honest. I have to say what I think is true about the muddled, morally ambivalent world, about the decisions I make that feel messy and uncontrolled, maybe arbitrary and maybe not.