A couple years ago, my wife, She Who Must Be Taunted, and I were chatting with an old friend of mine. My friend has a best friend whom we will call The Lawyer, because, well, he is. My friend had been attempting to give The Lawyer some advice about The Lawyer’s novel, which he’d been working on, diligently, for more than a year. He hadn’t shown a word of the novel to anyone; it was a coming-of-age story about a girl – never mind the fact that he wasn’t a girl, and he probably hadn’t actually known any girls of the appropriate age since he’d been of that age himself. My wife, ever helpful, attempted to provide my friend with the rudiments of useful advice, based on her substantial experience as a professional writer; I, on the other hand, simply dismissed The Lawyer as a kook.
There’s this myth, about the garret. The lone, isolated creator labors in the garret, working on his misunderstood work of genius without input, until he or emerges triumphantly to conquer the world with his creation. No one dare see his masterpiece before it’s done; no external advice is necessary. It’s a myth about genius and inspiration, a claim that a brilliant idea is a unique, private event, unsullied by previous experience or external feedback. No apprenticeship is needed, no expertise is required.
It’s a very popular garret. Some of you might recognize that this is the same garret that nurtures the inventors of perpetual motion machines. These garrets are very gentle on the souls and psyches of their occupants. There’s no outside world to burst their bubble of genius, no pesky voice of reason or critique to remind them that given that there are billions of people in the world, the chances of having a truly original inspiration are, well, kinda small. There’s no marketplace of ideas to compete in, no risk of failure – as long as you stay in the garret.
It’s a shame that this mythology is wrong in every single one of its details.
The reason I recalled this conversation with my friend is because I was talking to a different friend a couple weeks ago about how my wife is having a bit of trouble wrapping up her latest novel (and no, I’m not going to tell you about it, because you’ll steal the idea, it’s that good). My friend asked me about whether she’s in a writing group at the moment, and she’s not – she has been, like any good and serious writer, but at the moment, in some sense, she’s in her garret.
But it’s oh, so different than the garret that The Lawyer is in. See, the problem with his particular mythology of genius is that good art (and good science) arise from communities of practice. Hard work. Humiliation. A competition in the world of ideas. The open mike stage, the international conference, the MP3 store, the peer-reviewed journal. My wife isn’t in a writer’s group right now, but she doesn’t need it right now any more than I need a songwriter’s group, because – let’s all say this together now – she’s a published author. She’s already done this, and so have I.
We read and listen. We talk to other artists. We show people drafts. We have our public successes and failures. And after years of feedback and experience, we’ve both learned how to turn the scalpel on ourselves, how to internalize the lessons of the marketplace of ideas. We’ve learned our trade, and now all that’s left to do is practice it.
It’s not that we’ll never get another bad review, or never learn another trick. We’re both learning all the time – because we’re part of the community. The time in the garret is important, because you can’t write a novel or a song in a crowded room. But the time outside the garret is where you learn what to do inside the garret, and that’s what The Lawyer doesn’t understand.