I had the chance to teach some Steinbeck recently, as part of my PGCE, so I ended up re-reading Of Mice And Men as research. I probably won't end up delivering the lesson I'd planned (for reasons I won't bore you with) but I thought I'd share something I discovered in the novel's introduction... it may offer a little comfort to the struggling and frustrated writers among us.
Even when financially secure, Steinbeck wrote out of a kind of liminal zone: on the one hand confident in his art, secure in his expression; while on the other doubtful of his abilities, puritanically wrestling with a sluggish will. Over and over in the journals he kept while composing his novels, he records his angst, easing the self-doubt, so it seems, in the very process of writing the revelatory words:"It is strange how this goes on. The struggle to get started. Terrible. It always happens... I am afraid. Among other things I feel that I have put some things over. That the little success of mine is cheating. I don't seem to feel that any of it is any good. All cheating."
Writing was Steinbeck's passion and his livelihood, but it was also a perpetual challenge... even with public recognition, [Steinbeck] wrote with a considerable degree of anguished doubt about his own creativity.
On the one hand, I take comfort in that. On the other... it strikes me that even Steinbeckian success doesn't bring satisfaction. Still, self-doubt is always better than smug complacency.
By the way, did I mention that Too Much Sex & Violence #2 is out now...?
