I can always count on Donna to provide fodder for a blog post. This is in response to some issues a student of her’s is having. This is a situation with which I can empathize.
I understand the fear of showing your work to others. I’ve struggled with it in writing and in visual arts. Subjecting your writing to peers who get there jollies from tearing into other people’s work is difficult. It is perhaps even more daunting to risk judgment from teachers and students whose work you admire.
For a writer to compose a paper about her motivations, goals, and ideals for writing will be a difficult but rewarding task. Once she starts exploring the why’s of what she does, she will look at it differently. She will to act with purpose.
What is to be feared from showing her work to others? The fears of being not good enough and of being ridiculed top the list. Recognizing the worst that can happen and crediting herself with being strong enough to deal with it is the only way to get to the good stuff.
Looking back at my college career, my regrets are not those times my art or papers got trashed. My regrets are the times I didn’t put it out there. I was surround by teachers and students who’s talent still overwhelms me. Not all of them, but some of them had the fire and passion. How I wish I would have put more of my work into the public circle. No matter how harsh college may seem, it is a relatively safe place to expose your work. At the very least you have a captive audience.
I do not regret those moments when I faced my fear and threw my work into the fray. Once, I pinned a 6′x 6′ nude self portrait to the wall of the drawing studio. The project stands out not because it was my magnum opus. It was pretty average student work, although the hands were amazing. Perhaps it was not “finished,” but it pushed the extent of my skills. I was so afraid to hear what people were going to say. What a silly thing. There were some negative comments, but that became unimportant. In facing my fears, I went one better than joining the conversation. I offered my work and my ideas, skills, and views to spawn the conversation. We discussed the difference between “a nude” and “being naked.” Good ideas were exchanged. My next work was better. That is what it is all about. You can only improve so much inside your head, and practice can only take you so far. Ideas stagnate if you never bounce them off the Other.
The hurt of even the most scathing criticisms wears off, but the conversation is what stays in your head. Is guarding yourself worth choking your gift?
