difficulties and expectations

One exercise in the embodied writer class I'm taking asks us to to take a look at resistance to writing in two ways: what makes writing difficult at times, and what (unrealistic, lofty) expectations we place upon ourselves as writers. Here's what I came up with, pretty much straight out of my class notes. Yikes, this seems embarassingly narcissistic and whiny . . . yet I was suprised to discover that my classmates had sets of difficulties and expectations that were similar in spirit if not in detail.

Why is writing difficult?

Exhausting, it takes up too much time, so many other things you should be doing, this whole thing is stupid what do you think you're doing - god, it takes forever to get anything out at all, it's like wringing out an almost-dry sponge - sleepiness gets in the way, too, not enough rest, difficult to sustain the concentration . . .

The thousand different ways poetry should be. You're trying to meausre up to every one, to make the poem impervious to ridicule. It's that constant switching of position of critique, of looking at it from the perspective of every possible paradigm and ensuring that it holds up. And not only must it be impervious to ridicule, it must also do something that you want it to do, it must fulfill a positive, not merely negative need, it must advance a whole philosophy, advance the whole world another step (In other words, it's my lofty expectations which make the act of writing an exhausting experience.)

How/what should I be writing?

Writing that challenges the reader's expectations at every step, but in a delightful or enlightening way. Writing that doesn't sound amateurish, writing that no one can pick apart and destroy. Writing that speaks, that communicates, that says something, that has a deep and immediate emotional impact upon the reader. Writing that's smart and clever but not trite or petty. Writing that's lyrical and has a beautiful, moving sound, layering of images and provocations.