Between June and October of 1938, John Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, a book some of us had to read in our high school English literature classes.

During those four months of creating what some would call his greatest work, Steinbeck kept a journal.

If you think someone who writes a great book doesn’t have insecurities, keep reading.

Here are a few excerpts from The Grapes of Wrath Journal:
(Thanks to Austin Kleon for this!)

May 31, 1938: I shall try simply to keep a record of working days and the amount done in each and the success (as far as I can know it) of the day. Just now the work goes well.

 

June 5: My whole nervous system is battered. I hope I’m not headed for a nervous breakdown.

 

June 9: This must be a good book. It simply must.

 

June 11: My life isn’t very long and I must get one book written before it ends. The others have been make shifts, experiments, practices. For the first time I am working on a real book.

 

June 18: I am assailed with my own ignorance and inability. Honesty. If I can keep an honesty to it. If I can do that it will be all my lack of genius can produce. For no one else knows my lack of ability the way I do. I am pushing against it all the time. Sometimes, I seem to do a good little piece of work, but when it is done it slides into mediocrity.

 

July 8: I wonder how this book will be. I wonder.

 

August 24: My nerves are going fast. I wish I could just disappear for a while.. I must get back into the stride and sweep. It isn’t just noise and bustle, it’s all the shots in my direction. Nowhere to turn. Nowhere. Can’t think of these things any more. Where has my discipline gone? Have I lost control?

 

September 7: So many things to drive me nuts. I’m afraid this book is going to pieces. If it does, I do too. If only I wouldn’t take this book so seriously. It is just a book after all, and a book is very dead in a very short time. And I’ll be dead in a very short time too. So the hell with it. Let’s slow down, not in pace or wordage but in nerves.

 

October 4: My laziness is overwhelming. I must knock it over. I’ve been looking back over this diary and by God the pressures were bad the whole damned time. There wasn’t a bit that wasn’t under pressure and now the pressure is removed and I’m still having trouble. It would be funny if my book was no good at all.

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The Grapes of Wrath won Steinbeck the National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.

Steinbeck isn’t alone. Most writers–including me–have moments or days or months like this.

As writer Anne Lamott says so well:

“I can never tell what I’m doing when I’m in the middle of publication because I have no confidence. I have terrible self-esteem, along with boundless narcissism. It’s complicated in here!”

Does the insecurity of writers surprise you? Do you think every work of art or work of fiction requires this level of suffering in order to be great? As always, I’d love to hear from you.

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