sipping coffee with your shadow
John Steinbeck, journaling, Susan Sontag, Inner Critic, Virginia Woolf, Jerry Seinfeld
In a 1938 diary entry, John Steinbeck wrote, “I’m not a writer. I’ve been fooling myself and other people. I wish I were.” The admission is all the more remarkable because he penned these words while working on the novel that would become Grapes of Wrath. On top of that, he’d already published Tortilla Flat and Of Mice and Men—in other words, he’d achieved more success as a writer than many writers ever achieve in their lifetime.
The diary, though, was a new thing. He’d failed to keep a consistent diary in the past, but resolved to keep one while crafting Grapes “simply to keep a record of working days,” he wrote in an early entry. He added in another, “If a day is skipped it will show glaringly on this record and there will be some reason given for the slip.”
He was trying to externalize accountability, in a manner reminiscent of Jerry Seinfeld’s “Don’t Break the Chain” strategy. As a comedian, Seinfeld realized the key to telling better jokes was to write one joke per day. So he put a big calendar on his wall and drew a big, red X over a day once he finished writing one complete joke that day.
“After a few days you’ll have a chain,” he told the young comedian Brad Isaac. “Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job is to not break the chain.”
And an excitement and energy does build within Steinbeck as he gains this kind of momentum on Grapes of Wrath:
“This must be a good book. It simply must. I haven’t any choice. It must be far and away the best thing I have ever attempted — slow but sure, piling detail on detail until a picture and an experience emerge. Until the whole throbbing thing emerges. And I can do it. I feel very strong to do it.”
Flipping through the biographies of successful writers, leaders, and businessmen, journaling does seem like some secret wellspring toward achievement. Leonardo Da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, the Stoic philosophers, Oscar Wilde, Henry David Thoreau, Ronald Reagan, Anais Nin, and on and on all kept journals. Among the self-help crowd, it’s frequently offered as a tool toward personal growth and for good reason—it works. Many people I know journal in the form of “Morning Pages,” in which you write down your thoughts first thing in the morning and don’t stop until you’ve written three pages.
In many of these cases, journaling is a tool to clear your mind and to capture your “self” on the page. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s very difficult to see your self without external aid—“you can’t look directly into your own eyes without using a mirror,” Alan Watts said. And Morning Pages works for so many because by writing three pages stream of consciousness without stopping it’s a tool uniquely adept at defanging the Inner Critic—that belittling, berating voice we all have inside us. “In Jungian terms,” says Julia Cameron (the inventor of Morning Pages), “you are meeting your shadow and taking it out for a cup of coffee.”
Because by dumping all these negative thoughts on the page, you have tired out the Inner Critic and are then free to go about your day. You can also re-read these pages and identify how exactly you’re beating yourself up, so that you can better combat that voice in the future. I’ve found psychologist Jay Early’s 7 Archetypes of the Inner Critic to be a useful framework for that, by the way:
Perfectionist: “Not good enough” “You call that your best?”
Taskmaster: “You’re not even trying.” “You haven’t earned a break yet.”
Conformist: “But what will other people think?” “You’re being too much.”
Inner Controller: “You’re so weak to your vices.” “You have no willpower.”
Underminer: “Why are you wasting your time? It’s not gonna work.”
Guilt Tripper: “You’re so selfish.” “They’ll never forgive you for this.”
Destroyer: “You’re worthless.” “You should have never been born.”
But in examining the journals of writers, there seems a different game at play. Virginia Woolf said journaling was “a method of practicing or trying out the art of writing.” And Oscar Wilde joked he always carried his diary around so he might have something “sensational” to read. But it’s what Susan Sontag wrote in an essay about (of all things) the notebooks of Albert Camus that resonates most:
Of course, a writer’s journal must not be judged by the standards of a diary. The notebooks of a writer have a very special function: in them he builds up, piece by piece, the identity of a writer to himself. Typically, writers’ notebooks are crammed with statements about the will: the will to write, the will to love, the will to renounce love, the will to go on living. The journal is where a writer is heroic to himself. In it he exists solely as a perceiving, suffering, struggling being.
We witness this most clearly with Steinbeck who in various entries is seeking discipline and encouragement from himself. He is championing himself as his own Inner Coach.
All sorts of things might happen in the course of this book but I must not be weak. This must be done.
When I am all done I shall relax but not until then. My life isn’t very long and I must get one good book written before it ends.
I wonder whether I will ever finish this book. And of course I’ll finish it. Just work a certain length of time and it will get done poco a poco. Just do the day’s work.
But in another entries he is battling, like so many of us have at some point, a degree of Imposter’s Syndrome. Most interestingly, his Inner Critic is at its worst the closer he gets to finishing the book.
I have been remiss and lazy, my concentration I have permitted to go under the line of effort. If this has been the first time I should be very sad. But I am always this way.
Taylor (Steinbeck’s next-door neighbor) just rakes his yard and putters. But he would probably do a better job of this than I am doing. More ship-shape. I wish I were he sometimes. Just rake the yard and mix a little cement. How did I ever get started on this writing business anyway?
This book has become a misery to me because of my inadequacy.
Of course we read these entries with a certain admiration—and a certain distance to the struggle—knowing he did finish writing Grapes of Wrath. It’s a classic of American literature and sold 433,000 copies in its first year alone (can you imagine a literary book selling that much today—even though there’s millions more living in this country?). Ironically, that success wrecked Steinbeck’s mental health even more as the avalanche of undesired attention and publicity he received brought about a loneliness and lost feeling Steinbeck struggled to shake.
And so when he turned to write East of Eden, a longer book that some consider his true masterpiece, Steinbeck ditched the diary and instead wrote daily letters to his friend Pat. Along the way, he was calmer, less paranoid, and existed in a much warmer frame of mind. He wasn’t on his own in the journey and in the draft dedication for the book, he wrote to Pat: “This book is inscribed to you because you have been part of its birth and growth.”
In a way, it’s why I started writing this newsletter. I have wanted to organize these thoughts for some time and tried and failed. Knowing someone is at the receiving end is a deep source of comfort and encouragement. Thanks for reading.