Just as my students start to compare notes on an activity, I can hear the comments:
“Okay, so this is awful.”
“I’ve probably done this all wrong.”
“Mine’s pretty rubbish.”
And so on: a stream of platitudes / shittitudes.
Sometimes I leap in before the comments; sometimes I interrupt the chats just as the first are emerging.
“Right! Everyone! Before you go any further, I need to tell you the Paperclip Principle.”
It’s a simple principle: if you slag off your work, you have to pay me a paperclip. You’re allowed to say “I just did this in five minutes.” Everyone knows that, anyway; you’ve all had five minutes. You’re allowed to say “This is first draft.” We all know that, too. You’re allowed to say “I’m not happy with how this turned out,” “I still want to add more description,” “I’m worried my dialogue is clunky,”… You’re not allowed to say “This is shit.”
When I first came up with the Paperclip Principle, I was still teaching at one big round table, and there were occasional paperclips floating about, from my sheaves of handouts. When I moved house and started teaching standing up, with students at three different tables, I carefully kept my paperclips away from them, jealously guarded on my teaching sideboard. My students became ingenious. They’d bring in their own paperclip, to flourish as they slagged off their work; I’d grin and accept it as payment. They’d hand in writing for feedback knowingly paperclipped together instead of stapled. One student brought an entire box of colourful paperclips, which he presented to me at the door:
“I think this will cover me for the course,” he said.
I graciously accepted the box. “These are beautiful. Thank you. This counts as one paperclip unit, so you may slag off your work once.”
When I started teaching online, the Paperclip Principle became even more challenging: not only would they have to part with one of their own paperclips, but they’d have to get out an envelope, find a stamp, write the address, put it in the post. Easier, maybe, just not to slag off your work?
But it’s not easy, which is why we need the Paperclip Principle. It’s part insecurity and part cultural practice – that bit of our culture that says, “How dare you create something? How dare you be pleased with it? How dare you think it might be any good?” Even when someone isn’t insecure about their work, as soon as the shittitudes start flying, they swiftly join in, or at least hastily quench any excitement they were feeling. Embarrassed, now, by the group norm, to have felt that delighted flicker.
What a dreadful thing to do to ourselves. What a dreadful thing to do to each other. Specifically, it’s dreadful because:
It’s bad for your creativity
Think of your creativity as a three year old, I often say. Imagine a three year old excitedly picking “wildflowers” from the garden and running up to you with a “bouquet”. Would you crouch down in delight, thanking them for the beautiful bouquet of flowers? Or would you sneer and say “Why have you got a dirty fistful of weeds?”
And which response would mean you get genuinely elegant beautiful bouquets when that three year old becomes an adult?
Our creativity needs encouragement. Our early ideas are young: they haven’t had a chance to grow, yet; we need to cultivate them through enthusiasm, trusting that they’ll develop later. We need to praise our creativity and thank it. Not slag it off.
It’s bad for others’ creativity
As soon as one person starts slagging off their work, the others join in – or, as I said, at least quickly dampen their own delight. It’s not just our own creativity that we’re hurting: it’s the creativity of everyone in the room. And even beyond that room, it’s perpetuating the cultural practice that says “Don’t you dare be pleased at creating.”
It’s outsourcing our confidence
“So, I know it’s awful, sorry…”
“No, it’s not, it’s amazing, you’re a really good writer!”
When we insult our own work, we also set up a little game: I insult my work; you rush to reassure me how marvellous it is. It’s a familiar game for anyone who’s been in the ladies’ loos:
“I look awful.”
“NO, babes, you look AMAZING! I look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards!”
“Sweetheart! Darling! You look like a goddess! I look like something a fox dragged out the food caddy, covered in bin juice and onion peels!”
As soon as you start slagging yourself off, you’re placing a demand – an unfair demand, actually – on the other person to reassure you. That’s rubbish for them, but also rubbish for you. (Seriously covered-in-bin-juice-and-onion-peels rubbish.) Because even if their reassurance works, what then? You haven’t gained any actual confidence. Just an external source of it. And the day they’re tired, or down, or busy, or don’t want to play that game anymore, the floorboards open up beneath you. Because you just said “I’m awful,” and… no-one disagreed.
But you’re not awful. And that’s something you need to know.
*
If it’s so dreadful, why do we do it? It comes, as I said, both from insecurity and from cultural practice, the two intertwined, with the cultural practice rehearsing and reinforcing the insecurity. Strange as it may sound, insecurity is actually about ego. Ego doesn’t mean it’s arrogant: it means it’s focused on our perceptions of ourselves.
An unstable creative ego is prone to wild extremes. It says, “I’m brilliant! I’m shit! I’m a genius! I’m a fraud!” A stable creative ego says, “I’m neither brilliant nor shit. I’m making a thing that’s at a particular level of development, and I’m continuing to learn and develop. It’s not about me. I’m fine.”
That’s why all those other comments are fine:
“This is first draft.”
“I’m not happy with how this turned out.”
“I still want to add more description.”
“I’m worried my dialogue is clunky.”
“I’m struggling with the focus of this scene, it’s feeling muddled.”
“I can’t tell what’s working and what’s not anymore.”
All of those open the discussion to what needs development and what’s working well: the thing we’re making, at a particular level of development.
We’re always allowed to express uncertainty and confide insecurities. We want to be there for each other as writers, who share the weird and weirdly specific concerns that non-writers don’t get. We don’t want to force people to shore up our unstable ego, to model or perpetuate unhealthy behaviours, or to treat one piece’s development as a referendum on our worth as writers.
So how do we get there? We start with a small step: we start with paperclips. A few weeks into a course, after I’ve explained the Paperclip Principle, I start hearing,
“Careful, Megan will make you give her a paperclip!”
then “You owe us a paperclip.”
then, simply a cheerful “Paperclip!”
The norm has changed. It’s not the end of the process, but it’s an incredibly good start. And each of these beautiful paperclips represents someone taking a step forward towards a more stable creative ego, and seeing their work as something to develop, not as a fixed brilliant/shit binary.
Give each other paperclips. Build trust. Model healthy behaviour and avoid perpetuating unhealthy behaviour. And be kind to yourselves as well as each other: this too is about steady thoughtful development.
The Time To Write course this Feb – March will explore a host of deeper layers to our creativity like this, and a range of approaches towards developing a healthier more stable creative ego, so you can write with more ease, confidence, and joy. Click here for the full details and to book: the in-person course is now waiting-list only, but there’s currently one place available on the Thursday online course, and I may open a second online course on Tuesday evenings. Bookings close on Sunday 26 January.
