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Career advisors obsess about passion: Pursue your passion, do what you're passionate about, follow your bliss, love your work, etc.
I don't disagree that it's glorious to engage in work you are passionate about.
I do question the usefulness of making passion the center of work-related advice. That's because passion doesn't seem to take very well to a direct approach. That is, directly asking yourself, "What am I passionate about?" seems as often to lead to a self-delusion as a truth, and most of the time leads to, "I don't know" or "Many different things, equally" which, if the reflective cycle stops there, has produced nothing but a bit more anxiety in an anxious world. Better, for example, to first recognize that passion alone does not a happy career make, and then second, approach the idea of passion indirectly. As Gretchen Rubin says, avoid the ambiguity and overwhelmingness of "passion," and instead ask yourself what you like doing on a Saturday afternoon with nothing to do.
I wonder if there's a parallel in the writing world with all the advice around voice: Find your voice, write in your own voice, the best writing has a distinctive voice, etc.
In Louis Menand's piece on teaching the craft of creative writing, he notes:
"Show, don’t tell," which was the mantra in the nineteen-forties and fifties, to the effectively opposite mantra “Find your voice,” which took over in the nineteen-sixties and seventies.
In this informative Q&A with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux president Jonathan Galassi, he says:
All of these [great] books are different in terms of their angles of attack, but they're all very strong voices. And they don't sound like anyone else. I think the voice is the most important thing—and then the shape. ... Voice is one way of looking at it but aliveness is another way. And I think voice is kind of being killed in a lot of writing today.
As with careers and passion, I don't disagree with the fundamental point here, but I do worry about the intensity with which this advice is dispensed to aspiring writers. How, exactly, are you supposed to improve the "voice" of your writing? How do you know whether the sound of the words on the page are most true to you? What is "aliveness" and can not writing have bounce in its step but still lack a singular voice that would be familiar if you heard it again? How does "find your voice" square with advice to "imitate the best"? How, exactly, are you supposed to synthesize the best of other writers you are imitating -- and how do you know whether your synthesis is your own voice finally or just a pale collection of imitative gimmicks, smashed together?
Perhaps all this self-consciousness about "voice" is a good thing, but perhaps, as the questions above illustrate, it's needlessly inducing stress, and distracting from other, better focus points of writers (namely doing the thing -- actually writing and putting faith in the process of constant revision).
Jesse Berrett, with whom I email about writing issues, once told me that there's hope for all of us to better approximate that voice we hear in our heads. I like the attitude built-in to this statement. "A hope for all of us" rightly highlights that approximating the voice in our heads into words is an on-going project for everyone at every stage. It is a process of continual arrival.
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One suggestion oft-offered to writers in search of their "voice," especially those who produce prose that tries too hard or unintentionally comes off as pretentious, is to "write like you talk." Write like you were talking to a smart person across the table from you at dinner. I was intrigued, then, to see this snippet in Benjamin Kunkel's appreciation of David Foster Wallace:
Speaking for myself, I realized, while writing my first novel, that relaxed diction could be a tremendous strain and artifice. Afterwards I understood that I wrote more naturally and honestly when more formally.
That writing formally could be more natural is somewhat counter to conventional wisdom. Regardless of what's natural, it's definitely the case that writing like you talk -- writing informally, writing conversationally -- is much harder than writing formally. (That's why hacks like me tend to veer formal.) As Jesse put it to me, real life conversation contains banalities and tics that are annoying when in print, so the informal writer must eliminate those without eliminating the charm and accessibility he sought in the first place.
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From the Galassi interview, there's this wisdom:
Most words put down on paper are not interesting, or don't make sense, or are stilted. You can tell within two pages that something is not going to work....Only a few people in the world are meant to be writers.
The idea is that the people who should write are the people who can't not write. I think there are a lot of people who want to write, and who want to say something, but a lot of them don't have anything to say.
The "can't not do X" is a good formulation for most people who excel at their work. Orhan Pamuk sounded a similar note on why he writes.
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Here are five writing exercises, via Menand:
- Take a simple event: A man gets off a bus, trips, looks around in embarrassment, and sees a woman smiling. . . . Describe this event, using the same characters and elements of setting, in five completely different ways.
- Describe a lake as seen by a young man who has just committed murder. Do not mention the murder.
- Describe a landscape as seen by a bird. Do not mention the bird.
- Using all you know, write a short story about an animal—for instance, a cow.
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August 28, 2009 3:17 pm
I don't believe you should make your passion your career. Who wants to take the thing you care most about and make it a "job"? I say, find something you like to do and can do with people you like. That has worked for me.
August 28, 2009 4:38 pm
@GenerationXpert, I so agree! I took a job related to my passion for writing and, frankly, it killed my passion. I really miss the compulsion to write that I felt when I was in school. That doesn't happen to everyone--I have a friend in the same profession who is an accomplished (and produced!) playwright. But it is true for me, and I wish I'd gone into something I enjoyed well enough.
I have always said that I could do anything as long as I liked the people I worked with. Time has proved that to be correct.
August 28, 2009 5:07 pm
I wasn't exactly sure if this post was supposed to be centered around career/passion or writing/voice.
But, with the passion part, I think that one, you should not make your free-time passion to be your work. Once your paycheck is dependent upon it, there would be additional stress and pressure associated with that activity.
Second, I ABSOLUTELY believe that you should follow your passion with your career. Now that I have a job that I'm passionate about, my life is 10 gazillion times better! But, with that said, let's be perfectly clear, it is you should pursue a CAREER that you're passionate about. Does that mean that you'll like every job? No. Maybe you have to take a crap job that build the skills you need for your dream job. Or maybe you have to pay your dues in the industry, like working as a line cook before you could be executive chef.
But, as to how you could discover your passion... that's like picking a major. You think you know, but you don't really. You take a lot of classes, and see which one you like. Trial and error. Not that different with picking a career. Look toward your friends, your neighbors, your family, your colleagues, whose job you wish you had... and maybe that's a start.
August 29, 2009 3:36 pm
@KateNonymous - that's the same thing that happened to me. I was a journalist and miserable. It killed my desire to write. I didn't really get back into writing until I started blogging two years ago. I think that's why I haven't tried to make any money blogging. I just want it to remain writing for the sake of writing. Like what journaling was for me in 11th grade.
@Jeannie - I see your point, but that "crap job" often sucks the soul right out of you. I have the best job in the world and I am incredibly fortunate to have it. What makes it great, though, is the people I work with, and the fact that I get to do stuff I'm really good at it. But I've learned over the years (and a lot of douchebag bosses)that your "passion" isn't about work. I used to think I was "meant" to write. Now I realize it is a gift to be treasured, but what I was really "meant" to do with my life involves the relationships in my life - daughter, mother, wife, friend. I don't think you and I are that far off on our opinions on this topic. I just think, in the end, your career/job is just that and your passion is something else.
August 30, 2009 6:46 am
I think that "voice" means that when you read a piece, you see a bit of the person who wrote it. It means that you, as a reader, immediately feel like part of a dialogue with the writer and other readers. It should feel digested, and a tad intimate.
Back when I was in college, and writing lots of papers, I always told myself that if I felt bored writing something, the reader would definitely feel bored reading it. I wrote one Latin American history paper that had Bartolome de las Casas and Che Guevara doing the Time Warp between their conversations about revolutionary ideals. I knew my teacher would appreciate the creative angle. He gave me an A.
I like the exercises that you've cited here, Ben. I should try them :)
August 30, 2009 3:07 pm
You can follow a career that you are not passionate about only for so long before you burn out. It may not happen until 10 years down the track but then you will feel utterly lost - that's what midlife crises are all about. There needs to be a certain amount of passion, an invisible spark that can keep you dedicated to the job even when you are not enjoying it so much.
Having said that, be honest with yourself. Kidding yourself about your passion won't do anyone any good. Your passion doesn't have to be writing the great American novel or saving the world. Maybe your passion is to make obscene amounts of money.
The person who pursues A without caring about B or C will always beat the person trying to achieve A, B and C. However, I think that's a hollow victory. I think it's important in pursuing any passion, NOT to be single-minded. Stay connected to it, but don't miss the other good stuff along the way. And don't sell out your values or integrity or friends and family along the way. Otherwise you could reach your goal and find yourself thinking 'what now?'.
On the writing side, it feels like you are confusing a lot of different aspects of writing advice. Anything can sound silly when reduced to an aphorism but 'show don't tell' and 'find your voice' are actually the reduction of sound advice. And by the way, the two things are not at all contradictory.
August 30, 2009 5:17 pm
@Suzanne I think that it's so important to follow your passion with your job is because nowadays we spend SO MUCH time and efforts toward our job/career. With social media, this could literally be a 24/7 thing. So, if you can't be following your passion with you devoting so much time/effort toward it, you wouldn't be a happy person. Now, there is the camp that a job is simply what pays for your passion. If you really could compartmentalize your time/effort that way, perhaps you could be happy. I personally finds it challenging. When I work at a job that doesn't feed my passion, I lose interest... and itch for a change. As for the crap job part... eyes on the prize. eyes on the prize. =)
August 30, 2009 7:27 pm
Like the OP, I disagree with 'follow your passion' because it's too hard to follow that advice.
Your passion is not basketball, writing or marketing. Those are FIELDS that let you exhibit your best/favorite personality traits and skills.
Example:
I am a independent marketing consultant. It capitalizes on traits that I enjoy exhibiting:
Problem Solving- I like to make broken things work.
Influencing- I like to be the reason a choice is made.
Intuition- I like following a gut feeling.
Freedom- I like choosing who I work with and when I work.
Independence- I like not being tied to a company.
Fact Finding- I like to find information that is ground-breaking.
Leadership- I like to run projects.
The job I have is the only career I could think of that would allow me to do all those things at once. So, if I had to give career advice, I would say:
1. Make a list of all the things you like to do.
2. Break that list down into the skills/traits that make those activities fun.
3. Research what careers would let you do all (or most) of those things.
4. Do that.
August 31, 2009 12:32 pm
I think it's also important to note that passions change. It's great if you're passionate about your job, but that may be eclipsed by passion for another part of your life.
Also, there's a big difference between a job or career that you're not passionate about, and one that makes you miserable. You can enjoy what you're doing without being passionate about it.
And, of course, there's the idea of "different strokes for different folks." What works for you won't work at all for someone else, and that's just fine.
August 31, 2009 2:45 pm
I actually disagree with this statement somewhat: "...Only a few people in the world are meant to be writers."
I think everyone is capable of being a writer. If you can write, you can be a writer, you simply have to develop the skill and put in the hours to get decent at it. You don't even have to have access any mor (ie get published). You simply have to have something interesting to say, and say it in your own voice. Blogging is a perfect example of this...thousands of individual writers writing about whatever you're really interested in. I see Ben's writing as having a unique voice/structure/rhythm, and it's part of the reason why I like his posts. Voice is everything.
August 31, 2009 4:45 pm
"I think everyone is capable of being a writer. If you can write, you can be a writer, you simply have to develop the skill and put in the hours to get decent at it."
However, only a few people in the world are meant to be great writers. A few more will be quite good. I agree that anyone should be able to write decently.
I might be able to put a brush to canvas, but that alone won't make me an artist. Neither will being able to paint an object that reasonably resembles a horse.
September 4, 2009 1:39 pm
I thought this was very interesting and thoughtful. My daughter is a senior in high school and struggling to identify what she is interested in and, as a subset to that, what college(s) she should apply to that excel in whatever her interest is. We've had many discussions around essentially helping her discover her "passion". Obviously she's young and I agree that the best course is to try lots of things and discover what she enjoys and what she's passionate about. So she's stopped trying to figure out what she should major in and is focusing on finding a good liberal arts school that offers lots of options including the opportunity to study abroad so she can have the best exploratory experience. She's also a budding young writer and writing is at/near the top of her list of things she enjoys and is fairly good at. So your advice around finding one's voice and finding one's passion speak directly to her current situation. Part of what she has described to me is that she has so many interests and desires to experience so many things (and she's very talented in so many areas, if you'll pardon a mom's bias) that she's concerned that making a choice, by it's very nature, closes off other possibilities. We've talked about how the act of choosing opens doors and simultaneously closes others. That's part of life.
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