Today I’m totally stuck, and the words just won’t flow. It doesn’t take much to rattle my writing confidence, and today it’s completely shattered. All my little tricks for dialling into the zone are not working and I’m disappointed that my motivation was so fragile.
I completely sucked at English. I’ve clocked up decades worth of essays littered with comments like ‘Wrong grammar’, and ‘This is not a sentence’. What the hell? I’ve had computers give more useful feedback about code I’ve written than those red scribbles in the margin.
Tom Sachs is a lot funnier and concise when he talks about his weakness with technology:
I can’t use my computer for anything other than shopping and pornography, which is fine because I love those two things…
That’s what I’ve loved most about the Weartester program: Tom’s taken technology that doesn’t come naturally and incorporated it into his practice. He’s connected people with all the best bits from social media and digitally invited us to learn from one another at the studio.
It’s been way better than I ever imagined, and it feels a little like gardening. The community is a digital plant that Tom cultivates on social media. And while he can’t ‘control’ individuals and force particular branches to appear, he can carefully encourage more of the growth he wants to see.
OK, I think my writing confidence is back. I just had to prune away the obstacles, start typing and see what words started to grow.
Originally written for the Sachsian Syndicate.
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