Your Imaginary Friend is a Bitch

Dear Readers, (if there are any at all)

What do Captain Morgan, Eliza Doolittle, and WritingHannah have in common?

Well, after my previous post and youtube vlog I heard from several people who felt the "judgement-free creating time" and "stop worrying, sit down and start" advice was helpful, and I'm always glad to be of help. (that sounds totally self important.)

In this post I will endeavor to describe what I now realize is the secret second half of those ideas. (I'm bored, this post sucks balls, and I want some fucking cake!!)

If you haven't already noticed, I'm joined this evening by a nagging alterego who many of you are familiar with, whether you know it or not. She is the cousin of the sweaty gyrating sleazy thoughts I mentioned in the last post, a multifaceted personality at once resembling your mother, the Trunchbull, and a coked up hummingbird. Let's call her Ethel. Mostly because I don't know anyone named Ethel so there's no risk of gravely insulting anybody. Unless of course your name is Ethel... In which case you are more than welcome to create a psychologically abusive alterego and name her Hannah. (not funny)

Anyways, for all you non-Ethels out there, let's say you've been meaning to write a rap song about monkeys, mosaic your bathroom counter, or invent a new type of ice cream (fatty,) and you're off to a really good start because instead of wringing your hands and deferring the starting of the project until... infinity, you've actually given yourself a break from cripplingly high expectations and sat down. My latest youtube video (enough with the flagrant self promotion) www.youtube.com/writinghannah contained a favorite quote of mine which expressly states that "the art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair."

But that's not entirely true. Because once you're sitting down Ethel is just raring to sink her teeth into all of your ideas... they are either half-baked or derivative. Do you know what people will think when they see what you're doing? Your idea is a dead-end which you're never going to finish, and even if you did it would be offensively uninteresting. People are going to yawn or laugh at you. The Daily Show is on! You need a drink. You need a snack. You are a socially awkward pathetic excuse for a (fill-in-the-blank) and nobody likes you. Nobody. (No really, nobody.)

Needless to say, no matter how determinately you have positioned your ass in your work-chair, this sort of nonsense makes it difficult to keep your momentum. If you're not a fraud and a failure you're being lazy... if you're working really hard you're not working smart, if your ideas are interesting your execution is sloppy. You can't win.

But guess what? You're in good company. I think it's safe to say that most of the best ideas sounded totally insane in their conception, and only a fool doesn't think to question himself. 

I keep an old sugarbowl next to my computer. There's a little crescent notch in the top which is meant for a spoon, but that's not what I keep inside. Inside the sugarbowl are dozens of little shreds of paper. I have not opened said container for many weeks, but I feel it's important to share some of the contents with you in order to silence the nagging power of our collective Ethels, so here is a selection of the real scraps within...

"prose nauseatingly bad."

"OMG so bad."

"you are dry... creative pools all are behind you." 

"NOT RIGHT!"

"People are going to be pissed off about this."

"hypocrite."

"MESSYmessymessymessy"

"cliche"

"self indulgent"

"never going to finish"

...and my personal favorite which simply says "FUCK YOU!" accompanied by a big jumble of angry squiggles.

I'm not purporting to know anything more about the creative process than anybody else, but I do know that when I was a kid I always imagined Joyce and DaVinci and Mozart rocking back and forth in an artistic trance producing scores upon scores of brilliant earth-shakingly original ideas which flowed together with silky certainty.

In school you read about great generals and great journalists and all the great things they did, but rarely does anybody mention the universal Ethel. 

Everybody questions themselves, and capable people are often the harshest self-critics. DaVinci was actually so frustrated by what he perceived to be his own lack of self-discipline that he was often quoted as appealing to God with the question "tell me if anything was ever done!" Alan Lerner, triple Tony & triple Academy Award winning musical writer (he did one of my favorites, My Fair Lady,) was such a notorious procrastinator that his partner literally had to lock him in his hotel room any time they were nearing a deadline. Dickinson, Proust, Tolkien, all of them struggled immensely with self-critique to the point where much of their work was kept away from the public/ destroyed. 

Which is to say, you're in good company. There's a crazy Amadeus myth out there about people who are so brilliant at what they do that they just churn out brilliance by the barrel-full all the time, but that's bullshit.  Successful entrepreneurs in the media spotlight today (everybody from Trump to JK Rowling to Gates & Bono) don't want to have you hearing about how difficult it is to overcome their insecurities and creative roadblocks, they aren't going to admit how often they lie in bed questioning the value of their contributions. They're quick to share success stories, but rarely share any of their Ethel. She's a nasty little secret that everyone's  embarrassed to have around because maybe all those nagging doubts are true, and if anybody ever knew about them then...

*shudder*   (shut up Hannah, only lame-o 6th graders express actions with asterisks... asterices? You can't even spell right, how do you expect to write right?)

The point is that at least for me, growing up with stories of great leaders and thinkers like George Washington and Shakespeare, it never occurred to me that everybody has a creative process, which means doing something totally brand new is ALWAYS scary and ALWAYS fraught and ALWAYS peppered with a billion little Ethels no matter who you are. 

Everybody's seen this picture of Washington crossing the Delaware on December 25th- noble, resolute, rocking the "I'm such a bad-ass" Captain-Morgan stance...

But rarely do we talk about December 24th... the day Washington probably had a bit of a tummy ache, and smoked a bit too much tobaccee, and couldn't fall asleep anxiously anticipating his next move after being completely WALLOPED by the British at both the battle of White Plains and the battle of Long Island (which was the largest battle of the entire war!) We remember him as a strong commander, but nobody as savvy and humble as Washington would have been blind enough to rock the Captain-Morgan stance on December 24th. He wasn't the first president on December 24th, the rock of democracy, he was barely even a competent general. Plus he had just gotten a ton of people killed and fucked up the biggest battle he would ever fight in. Way to go Georgie. 

But people don't paint pictures of the presidents' tummy aches, or write epic poetry about whiners. They write about winners. Heros. We come to worship these heros- the "greats." The dead white men whom we quote in thesis papers. The dead white men whose last names have become adjectives... 

Well behind ever great man is a great woman. And behind ever great person is an Ethel. 

So don't despair if she's jabbering rather loudly of late. Only fools have the good fortune of not having her around. The bad news is that she never goes away. The good news is that the more frequently you manage to hear her and then shove her latest quotation into the proverbial sugarbowl, the more creative potential you unleash. 

Don't let your Ethel convince you that you're the only shmuck shmucky enough for her to hang around with. She's more than a bit of a tramp. She's been dogging everybody from Aristotle to P.Diddy since the birth of man. Such is the curse of sentience.

So know that you are never alone in feeling unproductive, untalented, unoriginal, or unloved. We're a queer bunch, us humans, and for all of our innovation and diversity we often forget what unites us... and that what unites us often undoes us. Self Awareness can lead to a desire to understand, to create, to communicate, and from thence comes civilization, science, art. But with the help of an insidious Ethel and others to compare yourself with, Self Awareness can also breed jealousy, self-criticism, competition, and all of the other ingredients of the war and senseless carnage we're so famous for. 

Trust yourself. Trust yourself for long enough to get all the way to the end of that project you've been putting off. Because I guarantee you will surprise yourself, and even if you look back and you (as all your creative forefathers and mothers before you have done) think it kinda sucks, it'll be more satisfying than looking back at nothing at all.  And you'll be more prepared for the next thing you try. And (if you're the type of person to believe in this sort of thing,) you'll be discovering your destiny along the way instead of lamenting a lack of one. 

Get out those sugarbowls, rock your best pirate stance, and ford into the wild unknown knowing that you know what you don't yet know that you know. (well if the rest of this treacly crap didn't scare them away, that certainly did.)

Much Love,

Hannah

"Trust thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron string." Emerson

Hannah's Guide to Eternal Happiness (Part One)

I worked for Yale admissions all four years and have advised thousands of nervous prefrosh about everything from med school requirements to fire safety regulations (apparently his biggest fear was being burned alive...gotta love those fresh-faced, well-adjusted Yalies....)

But after a while I realized that these kids were not asking me how many sweaters to bring New Haven, how many APs to take, and what acapella rush is like because of their love of sweaters, standardized testing, and public humiliation. It was because they were, like any kid about to enter college, freaked out.

But even if they come to Yale armed with those answers (a shitload, a shitload, and a load of shit) and more, I realized they wouldn't really be any better off. Logistics are what overachievers excel at, and those kids don't need me telling them that New Haven is cold unless they're retarded *oops* I mean recruited athletes. So I started to cut through the bull and tell them the things that I didn't think they'd be able to find in their bluebooks. And the more I talked the more I realized how many of us who are awesome at SATs and internships and auditions and elections are surprisingly lacking in something most butt-sniffing dogs are constantly capable of- Actually Being Truly Happy.

So I've sorted my thoughts into a few chunks, this being the first. 

HANNAH'S (slightly hypocritical)*

GUIDE TO ETERNAL HAPPINESS Part One

1. The Voice

If you are like me, or if you are even slightly more interesting than unbuttered toast, you have some form of The Voice. The Voice sounds a whole lot like you except that The Voice is a dick. The Voice takes great pleasure in saying helpful things like this:

"You are never going to finish ____ you incompetent lazy baboon. Go eat Mars Bars and forget your woefully pathetic _____ abilities in the mindless abyss of reality television. You will never amount to anything."

"Wow. This idea sucks more balls than 1. Paris Hilton and Liberace at a ball sucking competition and 2. A sweatshop full of cute asian girls who are only fed that tapioca-ball bubble tea and 3.a powerball lotto machine combined. To review: this idea, and by extension you, suck."

"Holy shit this is a disaster! Everything is horrible and it's only getting worse! Bail out now."

the one that I'm sure all you Yalies in the audience will be familiar with:

"That's not good enough. Why do you even bother? You could do so much better."

and the wonderfully uplifting:

"Nobody loves you and you have no friends. That annoying habit you secretly fear someone could hate you for is only one of the thousands of reasons that everyone hates you."

The Voice insists that it's The Voice and not you're awesomeness that makes you a successful person. "Without me you'd be a crack addicted loser" The Voice declares. But just for kicks, let's think of The Voice as if it were a voice outside your head instead of inside for a moment.

Imagine if you had someone hanging around you pretty much all the time who shouted about what a failure you were, and told you you were ugly and unworthy, and insisted that all your dreams are laughable delusions because you're such a talentless slob. 

If I were you, I'd punch that person in the face. And I hope you would too.

And let's remind ourselves that on some days we inflict that kind of battering on ourselves hour after painful hour with the expectation that we're being realists. It's game time. Nose to the grindstone. Tough love. 

That's bullshit.

People tell us it's good to be motivated and to give yourself deadlines. We assume this means being hard on yourself. But you and I both know that you're going to reach the finishline much faster if someone is cheering you on even when you fall down instead of taking the opportunity to pour bees on your head and smack you around with 2x4.

Let's be logical- if you're like me, and you err on the side of perfectionism, you do not need The Voice telling you that you're doing a terrible lazy uncreative mediocre job. You'll get it done faster and it'll be more pleasant if you just stay positive and wait to critique yourself until the end.

In fact, doing something creative like writing, and something more critical like editing, uses entirely different parts of the brain. Doing and criticizing is like simultaneously trying to tweek and analyze the exact decibel frequency of the aria you are trying to perform with passionate emotion- it's gunna trip you up.

So... what to do?

First thing's first. Identify it. The Voice is super sneaky and, as I said before, sounds exactly like you. It also knows everything there is to know about you, every icky awful cringe-worthy detail, so it has a pretty big arsenal of insults to draw from. Don't let it get to you. You're too important to waste time getting stamped on by some figment of your own imagination.

Secondly- Reason with it. Eventually you'll be able to hear the voice and tell it to shut the fuck up, but at first The Voice is not going to back down easily, so you'll have to be pugnacious and deal with feeling like a skitzo for a little while. It goes a little something like this:

"You suck."

"Glad to hear that you think that. But I'm busy right now."

"Ya, busy sucking"

"A helpful suggestion, but one which I know will only serve to make me feel crappy, which is ultimately going to hurt my productivity and quality of life, so I bid you good day sir."

"Who do you think you are you pretentious freak? This is why you have no friends."

"No, this is why you have no friends. You're negative and obsessive and if you talked to any of my friends the way you talked to me they would punch you in the face."

Thirdly- After working hard at the last one, you'll eventually have sussed out The Voice's tricks enough to smell The Voice like a distant but swiftly approaching hint of dog poo in the breeze, and just put it aside. It's not helpful. It's not enjoyable. You're not even going to dignify it with a conversation.

Woohoo!

So here is my footnote about why my guide is *(slightly hypocritical) ...

This is hard.

This is really hard. It is 100% worthwhile but you will have to work at it constantly, especially if you, like me, have The Voice turned on so loud that sometimes it has edged out your own voice entirely. *I do not claim to have mastered this system.

But I do know that every day I use it, my life is happier, healthier, and more meaningful. I have more productivity, more joy, more fun, more energy to make friends, more confidence in myself, and more certainty in what I want to do with my life than ever before.

Sussing out The Voice is the most powerful gift I've ever given myself, and I hope you find it helpful. 

Check back for another Happiness Guide and How To Get Published installment.

Let me know if you have questions :)

Much Love and Light,

H

Dirty Little Secrets for Cheap Laughs

Hooray for the Fringe!

Today I met up with fellow college grad G, who is spreading his carefree youth wings for the last time before September when he will be caged into official corporate servitude (don’t feel too bad, he’ll have enough cash to buy you and your family and force you to dress up in hilarious animal costumes for his afternoon entertainment before he’s 30). We have seen a host of shows ranging from complete shit to nonstop laughs.

One show opened with two gorillas emerging from orange puffs of smoke, then peeling off their fur to reveal leather, bikini-clad babes who proceeded to have an elaborate boob-jiggling sword fight before falling prostrate on the floor where they lay for the entirety of the show. Then the comedian of the evening came out dressed like Conan the Barbarian and shouted “Because I fucking can!” before starting his standup.

And he fucking could because he was fucking funny. Last year, G and I were brave/stupid enough to enter Yale’s Last Comic Standing, and we were... not. Seeing as that when I am not craving attention I am a neurotic recluse whose fear of rejection is only eclipsed by her fear of public failure, that may well have been both my debut and my Waterloo on the standup stage.

But in the written word I’m a lot more comfortable and can be flanked by my badass literary posse Captain Edit, Colonel Thesaurus, and General Wikipedia, so I thought I’d try out a popular theme I’ve noticed in the good acts here at the Fringe which I like to call the “I’m fucking crazy and here’s why” admission monologue. So here, in no particular order, is my list:


I have alternated between genuinely thinking I’m the laziest most worthless person that has ever lived and genuinely thinking I am the fucking messiah, or maybe more like a badass revolutionary who’s a cross between Che Guevara, that Terminator kid and Cheetara from Thunder Cats.

I often change clothes 3 times before walking out the door because, depending upon on where I’m going, I feel compelled to delicately navigate between being casual but not looking like a fucking hobo, trendy without looking like I'm trying to be trendy, hippie without the crunchiness, sexy without the sluttiness, and quirky without being one those obnoxious “LOOK AT ME!” girls who prances around in fairy wings.

Sometimes while you are talking, I hum a song in my head about all the things I would rather be doing than listening to you talk. (watching Schindler’s list on repeat, giving birth to quintuplets without anesthesia on an airplane that’s about to crash, swimming in snot, etc.)

Even though, as compared to 99% of the world, I come from a super comfortable financial background, if you have a trust fund, no matter how nice you are, not only am I jealous of you and completely dismissive of your ‘problems’, but I am probably doodling an imaginary Uncle Moneybags from Monopoly mustache onto your face as you talk.

I rage against all the bullshit masochistic anti-feminist swill in the media, but secretly love those old movies where the guy calls the high-collared straight-laced ingenue “doll-face” and passionately kisses her against her will and then she smacks him in the face but secretly absolutely loves it and goes in for another.

I love to be in charge, but will readily cede power and delegate responsibility in order to have a scapegoat in case things go wrong.

If I date you, I will test you with a formula which is as elaborate as it is illogical, and no matter how spontaneous you think we are being, I will have already determined whether or not you will ever get to touch my boobs by test number 3.

I am suspicious of, and only feel at ease with beautiful confident women once I am able to identify what about them is sufficiently fucked up (anything will do really, crippling fear of spiders, dead parents, lazy eye, lisp, lupus, hot but pants-on-head retarded…)

I think my farts smell like a delicious magical bread factory in a swampy but lovable bog.

I make fun of religions people, but have earnestly prayed at one point or another for all of the following things: blonde hair, a tomagatchi, chocolate cake, rock hard abs, a pony, a bag of pot as big as a pony, sparkly shoes, my own island, and an island of ponies wearing sparkly shoes and smoking pot... thank you Jesus.

I consider having children because I think there should be more of my DNA out there than other people’s. Darwin would have wanted it that way.

Feel free to share your own anonymous dirty little secrets. It might even inspire me to share the real ones... More on the festival to come.

xo
H

H to the Nth

I have been evicted room my room because my brother does not want me typing and now I’m in the hallway staring at the B&B fishtank filled with those gross Chinese restaurant fish who look like they had golf balls surgically implanted in their eyesockets. Golf is a huge thing in this town, 8 stores in a row all dedicated to the thing. It was invented here in St. Andrews, apparently, and they’re damn proud of it. I also learned that the longest animal in the world washed up on the shore- a nemertean worm that was 186 feet long. They're proud of that too. And if the two things a town trumpets as their greatest accomplishments are a dead someone hitting a tiny ball with a piece of wood and a dead invertebrate you know you're in for some fun times.

I am having trouble writing. I can’t seem to get into the flow and I feel like If I tell you guys what is going ion inside my head maybe that will make things easer, here goes:

BITCHY HANNAH: What do you mean ‘tell them.’ Who is them? Nobody is even reading this blog you're a terrible boring writer and an allaround lame excuse for a woman.
SENSITIVE HANNAH: I’m not always boring…
PRETENTIOUS PATROL HANNAH: When you’re not being boring you’re being pretentious and nobody likes a know it all. And when you’re not a know it all you are being a poser.
OCD Hannah: Totally a poser. Definitely. Definitely. A huge poser. Also, a bad writer.
CONSPIRACY THEORY HANNAH: Shit. If I say I’m a poser on the site maybe my possible poserdom will shine through even more clearly than it already does… and then people will want to assassinate me.
BITCHY HANNAH: Nobody cares enough about you to even read this blog letalone want to assassinate you you moron.
A.D.D. HANNAH: Wow that fish is freakin’ gross. Hey he kinda looks like Nixon!
BUSINESSLY H: Stop getting so distracted
SENSITIVE H: But look at those googly gills!

I keep checking my word count every 600 words and that makes it hard to keep going. Not to mention the fact that the girls don’t seem to want to be quiet:

BITCHY H: Nobody wants to read this. It’s drivel.
PRETENTIOUS PATROL H: Don’t make a Diderot reference that’s fucking ridiculous you Ivy League baffoon.
OCD H: I think you spelled baffoon wrong. Wrong. So wrong. OMG everything is definitely wrong.
CONSPIRACY THEORY H: Even this right now is boring, nobody wants to read a conversation of yourself and yourself and if they do they will think you’re crazy and the government will notice that you are an iconoclast and will tap your phone lines and then systematically turn your family and friends against you in a plot to undermine your creativity. Damn the man.
FED UP H: You have huge problems. Seriously. Get into therapy.

And then Zen master Hannah descends froma cloud. She has taken a lot of time off to sip tea on clouds, high high up there if you know what I mean.

ZEN H: Don’t worry. This writing thing is for you, do it because you enjoy it.
H FROM DA HOOD: Are you fo real g? I’m doin this to pay da billz billz billz.
P.C. HANNAH: That's totally offensive- like unspeakably offensive.
PARANOID H: This thing better sell a gagillion freakin’ coppies
FASHINISTA H: Then I can be on magazine covers
HYPOCRITE ALERT H: If your message to young girls is to love yourself you can’t go all Hollywood on us and dye your hair blonde and get photoshop touchups that would be totally against your philosophy.
FASHIONISTA H: Not even a little dolled up?
HYPOCRITE ALERT H: No
PROBLEM SOLVING H: I’ll pose for these magazines but insist there is also a picture of me looking normal and makeupless and regular without any touchups to reveal the juxtaposition between the two, the paradox of a person perceived… Ceci n'est pas une Hannah.
PRETENTIOUS ALERT H: Fuck you.
S&M H- what about playboy wold you do playboy?
BILLZBILLZBILZLZ H:Well I guess I would if they offered like $250,000 that would pay off my student loans and then some
FASHIONISTA H: And then some shoes!
ACTIVIST H: Or some orphans in Malawi
REALITY CHECK H: You know what you are a freaking psychopath none of this is happening. What are you doing? Get back to work.
PESSIMIST H: I concur, except that not only are you a hypocrite but a total hack and it’s ridiculous to even consider this type of attention because this book will fizzle and sizzle and die as you have no talent whatsoever and might as well start busking on the street for quarters.
UBER PESSIMIST H: Fuck you. Fuck you. Your writing? Fuck that with a flaming chainsaw.

ZEN H: Just breath Hannah, breath.
SARCASTIC H: Thanks for that update genius.

All the hannahs are getting tired and exhausted and then internet browising Hannah comes along…

INTERNET BROWSING H: I know! How about you google obscure easter eggs hidden in lost on lostpedia!
PESSIMIST H: You know what this reminds me of, that play that you never finished. That sucked. You will never finish that the right way.
TANGENT HANNAH: The floorboards make a nice pattern.
ZEN HANNAH: Within men there are multitudes.
WIKI HANNAH: Who said that? Let’s check…
BUSINESSLY HANNAH: Okay guys, here is the plan. We’re going to just go freakin type and do it and do it and do it and it’ll be done.

Right! Say every Hannah except for internet browsing Hannah who has just found a totally cute video of kittens moving their heads back and forth in synch to music. Look at ‘em all! Kittens! Woohoo! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY0MSuyaKMk


Silence. Silence as the sleep kicks in. I am tired and list making Hannah starts making the day begin before the sun has risen- must write 7000 words or 6 pages 200 pages divided by 11 days…

ANTI-ALGEBRA Hannah: fuck you math
PROBLEMSOLVING H: oh ‘c’mon we can do this one. It’s not that hard.
HANNAH- hey I’m pretty pleased with this whole multiple voices thing. It’s a good way of communicating what’s going in on inside my head. I like it. Right guys?

For once there is no disagreement. Perfectionist thinks of course that now there needs to be a book movie epic novel and life changing broadaway adaptation of this which wins 9 tony awards and sweeps the Oscars in its movie adaptation before it can actually be taken seriously. Pessimist H thinks it could be better. But for the most part we are contented and in agreement. And maybe that’s why I like writing, because after all the bullshit if something is just right, then for a brief moment all the hannahs are in synch. Even Wiki Hannah knows that the only place I will find the truth I’m looking for in exactly the right words is somewhere between all of the voices, and when we find it, (quick note, Pretentious Alert Hannah thinks that using the royal "we" might come off as really fucking pretentious but that stating the concern here openly will absolve us)… sometimes, when we’re all on the same page, I feel like I can write like a motherfucker and I'm on the right path- I don't know where it goes but at least I'm on it. Pause. Breath. Ha! Perhaps an edit. Perhaps an edit or two, A few?

MAD HANNAH: How about a delete.

Okay okay enough already I get the point. I write with a merged mass of minds. I am rarely a phenom but sometimes things ring true and the voices shut up for once. It’s refreshing. It’s awesome. It’s what I hope comes my way more often… here’s to hoping.

xoxo
H
(&H&H&H&H&H&H&H&H&H&H&H&H&H&H&H&H&H&H)