One of the techniques I talk about most often is the Angst Jar. This is a tool I use to help myself get through creative failure and persevere, even when writing becomes difficult (which, inevitably, it does). The Angst Jar is designed to give you an outlet for creative pain, allowing you to channel it and get it out of the way, so you can get back to the important work of writing. But before we can talk about what the Angst Jar is and how it works, we need to talk about the difference between pain and suffering.
Pain vs. Suffering
In mindfulness terms, there is a distinction between pain and suffering. Pain is the objective “bad thing” that has happened, whereas suffering is all the angst and yucky feelings we pile on top of the pain. That suffering doesn’t make the pain go away and only makes the pain feel worse. Let me give you an example.
I live in New York City and I live by the subway system. Every so often (usually when I’m late getting somewhere) I hop on a subway and suddenly the train stops between two stations. The train stopping is the pain, because now I’m stuck in a sweaty, sticky subway car, crammed in with a bunch of strangers, and who knows when the train is going to start moving again.
The suffering comes when I frantically check my phone for reception (there is none) and every thirty seconds I check the time, only to see the minute hand creep slowly toward the time when I’m supposed to be somewhere. While all this is happening, my inner monologue starts going a mile a minute, like this:
“I can’t believe this train has stopped. I’m going to be so late for my meeting! What will they think of me. I’m so irresponsible. I should have left sooner. I can’t believe this train has stopped…”
As I said before, suffering doesn’t make the pain go away. In fact, it makes things worse. Contrary to popular belief, checking my phone for reception eight thousand times and looking at my watch every thirty seconds doesn’t magically make the subway start moving again. It only makes me more stressed out.
The same pain vs. suffering dichotomy happens in writing. Let’s face it, at some point in our writing careers we’re going to experience pain. Maybe it’s a rejection from our dream agent. Maybe it’s a book deal that falls through. Or maybe it’s a nasty one-star review. Whatever the source of that pain, at some point or another, we are going to experience some sort of failure in our writing life. That’s just a natural part of being in this business.
People say we need to have a “thick skin” and let rejections roll off our backs, but I think that’s baloney. I don’t know about you, but for me rejection hurts and just shrugging my shoulders and “shaking it off” only buries the pain, it doesn’t make the pain go away. And when pain gets buried, sooner or later it rears its ugly head again.
Worse yet, a lot of times we as writers compound the pain of rejection and failure by taking it personally and we allow ourselves to wallow in a pit of misery. Instead of saying, “this failed” we say, “I failed,” and suddenly the failure is no longer about the project, but it becomes something internal, embedded in our very selves.
We start saying things to ourselves like: “This rejection means I must not be a very good writer. Maybe everyone else in the world sees something I don’t. Who do I even think I am? Maybe I’m not meant to be a writer after all.” The rejection itself is the pain, but this negative self-talk is a form of suffering and it doesn’t make the rejection or failure any easier. In fact, all it does is make us less likely to get back to our writing.
But here’s the thing: if we give up on our writing, the rejection wins. We are allowing some external obstacle to keep us away from doing work that is deeply meaningful to us. We need a mechanism, a method to handle that rejection, and do it in a way that both honors the pain we’re feeling (rather than sweeping it under the rug) and also contains that pain so that it’s out of our way and we can get back to writing. This is where the Angst Jar comes in.
Introducing the Angst Jar
The Angst Jar is a container—any container. For me it’s a pink, square, glass jar I found in a thrift store, but it can be anything you want. A pickle jar. A basket. An old, cracked coffee mug. Whatever it is, choose something that speaks to you, because you may be visiting this Angst Jar pretty often. For me, the color of the jar is significant because it’s my favorite color and every time I look at it, it makes me smile.
Once you have an Angst Jar picked out, here’s how to use it. When a rejection or failure happens, pull out a piece of paper and write about it. Dump all your feelings onto the page until you’ve got nothing else to say about it. Then, fold up the piece of paper and put it in the jar. Once it’s in your Angst Jar, that angst is no longer your problem—it’s the jar’s problem. But the work doesn’t stop there.
You see, angsty thoughts are a lot like toddlers. Have you ever had this experience? You tuck your toddler in, read them a story and sing them a song, then you kiss them good night, dim the lights, and tip-toe out the door. The minute you’re about to sit down in the living room to watch some grown-up TV, there comes that little pitter-patter of tiny feet. So you pick up the toddler and put them back in bed. You read the story and sing the song. You kiss them good night and quietly tip-toe out of the room. Only to have them pop out of bed yet again. So you keep picking them up and putting them back in bed until they get so tuckered out, they finally go back to sleep.
Angsty thoughts are the exact same way. You put them on a piece of paper and tuck that paper into the jar. But somehow, those angsty thoughts manage to climb up out of the jar and crawl back into your brain. So then it’s up to you to redirect those thoughts and send them back into the jar. You have to keep doing that over and over again, until it finally sticks.
Why the Angst Jar Works
The Angst Jar works for a few different reasons. First, it allows you to channel all the pain and suffering you might experience from a given rejection or failure, but put it in a safe space where it’s out of your way. It allows you to clear the decks of any angst so you can get back to the important work of writing.
But the other thing that the Angst Jar does is that it honors the pain and acknowledges the suffering, rather than trying to sweep them under the rug. I don’t know about you, but when I bottle up painful emotions, they usually find some way to come out, usually involving some melodramatic, explosive reactions on my part. It’s like a balloon… you fill it with enough pressure and it will pop and make a loud noise, but if you let the air out slowly, it will deflate quietly. The Angst Jar allows you to let the air out slowly on your angst, without trying to ignore the pain altogether.
Remember what I said earlier about how some people say that as artists we should have a “thick skin.” The beauty of the Angst Jar is that it allows us to have that thin skin so many of us have—with all the artistic sensitivity that comes with it—but gives us an outlet so we can act as if we have a thick skin. It gives us an outlet to channel failure and rejection in a way that’s productive and lets us keep writing.
I’m not the only person who talks about this idea. Elizabeth Gilbert (of Big Magic fame) has talked about having a “fear chair” in the classroom, a seat at the table (as it were) where fear is allowed to sit, but it can’t control the artistic expression. The idea is to put the fear in a contained space that stays out of the artists’ way, so instead of fighting against fear, we are letting it be a passenger on the creative ride. This is a similar concept to the Angst Jar, though the Angst Jar doesn’t just apply to fear, but to any negative emotion that might be impeding our creative process.
Now, it’s your turn.
If you don’t already have an Angst Jar, use this newsletter as a prompt to try out the technique. Go out and find a container and start filling it as needed.
Until next time, keep writing and keep being awesome!
P.S. For more info on Gabriela Pereira, the founder and instigator of DIY MFA, check out her profile page.
