The Gap

Back in 2009, Ira Glass gave a pretty remarkable interview with PRI where he talked about story telling and creative process. Last year, photographer Daniel Sax put together a typographic video to accompany a small segment on what Glass calls the gap. The gap being, ultimately, that months or years when you're an early-practicing artist and your ability doesn't quite match up to what you want it to be. The video's beautifully put together as an accompaniment too, with some pretty awesome photographs and style.

We sent it around the day job back when Sax released this, and it's been one I've thought about a lot since. I've been lucky enough to have a fair amount of success with my writing, to have people who've enjoyed my work enough to become an audience, and that's got to be one of the best part of being a writer. Knowing that your work connects with a reader. That it resonates.

Of course, not every story is something that comes easy. I'm especially finding at the moment, as I try to finish up a collection, that two stories have turned their back on me. I don't know if it's a lack of connection with the stories, but over the last week or so I haven't felt like a good enough writer to do them justice. That these characters so perfect in my head aren't translating to the page. Are coming off as one dimensional or silly. I'm sure it's just a slump, but Glass' words in The Gap are echoing around my head, forcing me to keep sitting down with these stories and try to articulate them in a way that I could be proud of.

I managed to get a draft of one of them more or less finished today, and it was a strange feeling because man, I hate what I've written. I know, I know, no writer ever sits back and looks at their work and thinks fuck yes. There's always a degree of hesitation, of being unable to see the better parts of your writing as well as maybe other people do. And there are scenes in this story that I love, but they appear like blips of life in a flat-lining patient. Ah, well. Maybe I'll like it more in the morning.