Ottessa Moshfegh: Confess to your fears and self-doubts
"Find the things that are interesting AND hidden in yourself."
Author
on creating complex/flawed characters.A. What’s interesting about you? And B. What do you feel is lame or ugly and needs to be hidden?Â
Sometimes, the answers to both questions are the same. That’s kind of what I’m aiming for, i.e. find the things that are interesting AND hidden in yourself. Art is about expressing what hasn’t been expressed, and practicing finding those precious metals is good for your writing…
The desire to write fiction is the desire to detach from one’s ego and get the fuck over oneself. To do that, it is essential to confess to one’s fears and self-doubts. If you want to write something, if you have the impulse to write something, even if you don’t know what, A LOT IS ON THE LINE. If you don’t write this thing, you’ll never get over it. You’ll never learn from it. You’ll just wallow in it. Or worse, you’ll deny it. And then you’ll explode.
P.S. Check out my standup special/doc/experiment where I perform on various substances: