transformation

You’re a beginner. You haven’t become who you want to be—yet. You want to wake up in the mornings to write, but you often don’t manage it. What we learn from Agnes Callard—and Kafka, and Proust—is that here’s nothing wrong with this state of affairs, nothing to be ashamed of, no reason to stop. We can, and should, continue to aspire.

For the aspirant, there’s nothing more comforting than realizing you are not alone in trying. You’re not alone in trying to find a subject, trying to develop the discipline, trying to turn your life towards something that you can’t quite understand yet.

Doing something badly, she insists, isn’t a sign of unworthiness. Nor is the fear that you are doing it in a way that seems fake, insincere. If you can’t apprehend the value of a writing practice yet, it’s enough to apprehend that there is something there, something desirable and important to you. That’s more than enough to begin. Aspirants, Callar... See more

We aspire by doing things, and the things we do change us so that we are able to do the same things, or things of that kind, better and better. In the beginning, we sometimes feel as though we are pretending, play-acting, or otherwise alienated from our own activity. We may see the new value as something we are trying out or trying on rather than s

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What Agnes Callard argues—and what writers’ diaries show us—is that we have to keep trying. Write regularly! Don’t give up! Don’t let the doubts stall you, the doubts that say: Who do you think you are? What makes you think you can write? Aren’t you fundamentally unqualified and incapable, in this moment, of writing well? Why are you trying so hard... See more

The work is visible in her struggles to sustain interest in the hobby or relationship or career or religion or aesthetic experience that will later become second nature; in her repeated attempts to “get it right,” attempts that must be performed without the benefit of knowing exactly what rightness consists in; and, most generally, in the fact that... See more

It’s so embarrassing to try and be someone you’re not. It makes you a tryhard, a poseur, a pseud. The problem, of course, is that when you aspire to be better than you are, there’s no other way to do it except by starting. You’re always faking it at the start, always doing things badly. You’re pretending to appreciate things that you can only dimly... See more

If we managed, with heroic unselfconsciousness, to really commit to becoming a writer , an artist , a better person— then we would have to acknowledge that we aren’t that person yet. More than that: Striving means we aren’t that person yet—and we might never become that person. It’s easier to not try—and indulge in the subtle, self-lacerating logic... See more

“Being a well-meaning phony,” Rothman suggested, “is key to our self-transformations.” Phoniness wasn’t a sign I was fundamentally, intrinsically unworthy of my aspirations. Phoniness was, in fact, an essential part of any aspirational project.

...[A]spirants must grow comfortable with a certain quantity of awkward pretense. If someone were to ask you why you enrolled, you would be overreaching if you said that you were moved by the profound beauty of classical music. The truth, which is harder to communicate, is that you have some vague sense of its value, which you hope that some future

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