Monday, March 14
Back from lunch
I sometimes (always?) let things get away from myself. I sometimes imagine the life of a writer as this great fictional unobtainable future, book tours, publicity, Charlie Rose's oak table, checking my Amazon ranking, when in fact the real world that stuff has nothing to do with writing. The real secret (I tell myself, when I remember to talk to myself) to success is to just fake it. And in the faking of it, you become it.
I think back to one of the first months I was promoted to a suit-wearing position (back in the day when we wore suits) at the nation's largest insurer and I had to go to my first all management meeting, to the secret society (as it were, as I imagined, the fake laughter, the free coffee, the glad-handing) and the point of this particular meeting was a guest speaker, who wasn't really a true guest speaker since he was but one of our own fellow employees who'd been elevated to a guest speaker role for the day, and the whole point of his speech was the need for a positive attitude. His bottom line: one way to remain upbeat was, if nothing else was working, to fake it. And then in true corporate American fashion, he had us participate in a show-and-tell to show us when he meant, and so he made us, all 200 of us cramped together in the office cafeteria, recite a short phrase, and then get up on our feet and recite it again, and then to add in an arm thrust over our heads for emphasis and then to shout it with the arm thrust to make sure the people in the next room heard us, and so on, louder and louder, more and more self conscious grew we. And it was incredibly dopey and cringe-worthy and of the school of forced corporate fun. And dang it, it worked.
The phrase he made us jump to our feet and shout: "If you act enthusiastic, you will be enthusiastic."
C'mon, shout it with me! Three times! Four times! C'mon!
As you know, I've never been one to buy in to such hogwash as this. And yet. And yet. The whole construct is false, but the reality, as much as I hate to admit it, is sadly kind of true. And this truth led me begrudingly to the philosophy of "perception = reality" which I fought and fought for a long time but now mostly tend to agree with. It's a theory (P=R) we in the public relations trade rely on to develop messaging and communication strategies: whatever you say frequently enough, whatever you self-define, whatever message you can develop (that of course benefits your client) and repeat and repeat and repeat at every opportunity, that message, repeated enough, becomes reality.
If you act enthusiastic, you will be enthuisastic works the same way. By jumping to your feet and shouting it, you are of course acting hyper-excited. Very enthusiastic. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's what I hate about positive attitudes, I suppose. Is that you can fake it. (What's the old Samuel Goldwyn quote? "If you can fake sincerity, you've got it made"? (Yes, it is))
I bring all this up because the same thing is true of being an artist, or a writer. It's just a matter of faking it. And if you fake -- that is, act like a writer, in my case, or a musician or artist in my friends's cases -- you've got it made. So I just need to pretend to be a writer, to carve our a routine of an hour or two a day while I'm still holding a full-time job in the reality-based world and doing the full-time parenting gig to a couple of (near) teens, then I can be a writer. I still have to pretend to write, to go through the motions of writing, and editing, and proofing, and re-reading, and reading other writer's novels, and staying atop of things, and sending stories out, and queries, and by sheer fact that I'm doing this soley to pretend to be doing it, I will in fact not only be developing good writerly habits, I will in fact be doing the things a writer does (writing, etc.) and hence I will be a writer.
So it's simply a matter of faking it, of letting myself be a writer by acting like one, that I become one. And when I become one, I can deal with/worry about all those other things that go with being a (successful) writer: agents, galleys, publicity, interviews, book-signings, etc. (which, of course, in and of themselves have nothing to do with writing but everything to do with marketing and publishing....)
Free the brain!
I think back to one of the first months I was promoted to a suit-wearing position (back in the day when we wore suits) at the nation's largest insurer and I had to go to my first all management meeting, to the secret society (as it were, as I imagined, the fake laughter, the free coffee, the glad-handing) and the point of this particular meeting was a guest speaker, who wasn't really a true guest speaker since he was but one of our own fellow employees who'd been elevated to a guest speaker role for the day, and the whole point of his speech was the need for a positive attitude. His bottom line: one way to remain upbeat was, if nothing else was working, to fake it. And then in true corporate American fashion, he had us participate in a show-and-tell to show us when he meant, and so he made us, all 200 of us cramped together in the office cafeteria, recite a short phrase, and then get up on our feet and recite it again, and then to add in an arm thrust over our heads for emphasis and then to shout it with the arm thrust to make sure the people in the next room heard us, and so on, louder and louder, more and more self conscious grew we. And it was incredibly dopey and cringe-worthy and of the school of forced corporate fun. And dang it, it worked.
The phrase he made us jump to our feet and shout: "If you act enthusiastic, you will be enthusiastic."
C'mon, shout it with me! Three times! Four times! C'mon!
As you know, I've never been one to buy in to such hogwash as this. And yet. And yet. The whole construct is false, but the reality, as much as I hate to admit it, is sadly kind of true. And this truth led me begrudingly to the philosophy of "perception = reality" which I fought and fought for a long time but now mostly tend to agree with. It's a theory (P=R) we in the public relations trade rely on to develop messaging and communication strategies: whatever you say frequently enough, whatever you self-define, whatever message you can develop (that of course benefits your client) and repeat and repeat and repeat at every opportunity, that message, repeated enough, becomes reality.
If you act enthusiastic, you will be enthuisastic works the same way. By jumping to your feet and shouting it, you are of course acting hyper-excited. Very enthusiastic. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's what I hate about positive attitudes, I suppose. Is that you can fake it. (What's the old Samuel Goldwyn quote? "If you can fake sincerity, you've got it made"? (Yes, it is))
I bring all this up because the same thing is true of being an artist, or a writer. It's just a matter of faking it. And if you fake -- that is, act like a writer, in my case, or a musician or artist in my friends's cases -- you've got it made. So I just need to pretend to be a writer, to carve our a routine of an hour or two a day while I'm still holding a full-time job in the reality-based world and doing the full-time parenting gig to a couple of (near) teens, then I can be a writer. I still have to pretend to write, to go through the motions of writing, and editing, and proofing, and re-reading, and reading other writer's novels, and staying atop of things, and sending stories out, and queries, and by sheer fact that I'm doing this soley to pretend to be doing it, I will in fact not only be developing good writerly habits, I will in fact be doing the things a writer does (writing, etc.) and hence I will be a writer.
So it's simply a matter of faking it, of letting myself be a writer by acting like one, that I become one. And when I become one, I can deal with/worry about all those other things that go with being a (successful) writer: agents, galleys, publicity, interviews, book-signings, etc. (which, of course, in and of themselves have nothing to do with writing but everything to do with marketing and publishing....)
Free the brain!
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So, Eric, does this idea of Perception=Reality hold for politicians, also? What I'm specifically wondering about is our stupid president right now--I think he knows this secret. He said over and over and over and. . .that Iraq had weapons of etc. etc., until enough people bought it that he was allowed to take the country to war. Now he's on this huge push to convince enough people that the Social Security system is on its last gasps, and I'm beginning to wonder if he's going to be able to pull this one off, too. This is the thing with him, he doesn't quit. ONce he gets an idea in his head, he just runs with it, repeating it over and over and over, until, amazingly, enough people buy it that he gets his way.
Terry
Terry
# posted by 
: 5:46 AM
: 5:46 AM
Of course it means that, Terry. And certain politicans and government officals are very, very, very good at it (see: Rove, Karl). It's why Americans were left thinking Kerry was some sort of wuss when in fact he served and was injured in Viet Nam while the president was doing whatever it was he was doing dodging service back home.
If you repeat something often enough, it becomes the truth. All truth is relative. It's the power of the media, eh?
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If you repeat something often enough, it becomes the truth. All truth is relative. It's the power of the media, eh?
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