Liz Armbrecht

Do you ever feel like you

JUST

CAN’T

WRITE.

Just can’t put words to paper? Or the few words you do get down are complete s***? I do. All the time. And I know I’m in good company with my fellow writers. And boy do I wish there was an easy cure for it.

Well, I just so happened to watch American Horror Story: Red Tide (from the Double Feature season) and read What Feeds the Lake by J.C. Hemstreet in the last month, and I couldn’t believe I’d happened to stumble across two pieces of media that offered solutions to this chronic problem.

If you’re willing to pay the price.

The Plots

American Horror Story: Red Tide follows the story of Harry Gardner, a TV writer, and his wife Doris and daughter Alma, an aspiring violinist. They move to a small coastal town in the off season to get Harry some space to write, a classic writers’ retreat tale.

Unfortunately, despite the aesthetic location, Harry still can’t seem to put words to page, until he meets playwright Austin Sommers and romance novelist Belle Noir at the aptly named bar, The Muse. They offer him a little black pill that promises to not only cure him of his writer’s block, but to make him automatically into a genius and great success. After hemming and hawing over it, Harry takes the pill and sits at his desk. And writes, and writes, and writes until he not only has his TV pilot he’s owed his agent Ursula, but the entire season. First drafts, all of them, and Ursula calls him and says not only did Joaquin Phoenix read it and say yes on the spot to playing the lead (and would do it for free), Netflix offered Harry a deal already to write more.

The catch? Harry starts to notice he can’t seem to eat normal food anymore…instead, he craves raw meat and, eventually, blood in order to feed himself. Austin’s irreverent explanation when Harry confronts him about the blood drinking thing is, “Metaphorically, something about artists stealing other people’s life blood to inspire our work.” The 6-episode story asks, would you trade your soul to become a prodigy? What price would you put on fame and success at your craft?

In What Feeds the Lake, main character Callan Lark (she/they) is not necessarily looking to become the best artist in the world, but to simply survive as a “capital ‘A’ Artist” in the world and “make a living the way artists do.” At the beginning of the book, they’re invited by the mysterious Professor Crane to his annual artists’ retreat at a cabin on Pitch Lake in Montana over the winter term in order to hone their craft. Professor Crane’s retreat is renowned in the art world for producing artists who create art that can secure the patronage of the wealthy, allowing them to be artists instead doing art on the side. Callan enters the retreat shy and unsure, getting bad vibes from both Professor Crane and the lake that’s as black as pitch the cabin is perched on.

The catch? The four art students have to, quite literally, confront their personal demons in order to become their true selves and create authentic art. The book raises questions about what separates good art from great and how being true to your own identity (or not) can help or hinder you in creating the great.

The Gut Punch

I mean, wow. As someone who a) has writer’s block all the time and a pretty significant case currently and b) gets paralyzed by the thought that what I write/produce will never be extraordinary, this series and book both got under my skin!

First, both of these pieces of media twist and horrify the idea of an artist’s/writer’s retreat, a pretty typical activity undertaken for inspiration, and often to help with writer’s block. At least in What Feeds the Lake, Callan only has go on the retreat, confront their traumatic past, forgive themselves, and be their full authentic self (simple, right?) in order to get paint on canvas. In Red Tide, Harry goes on the retreat but then succumbs to the temptation of the easy way out, and takes the pill.

The underlying horror, at least for me, is the idea of this monstrous pressure to create, and to be good at it. To produce content, to be productive, to write beautiful sentences and make art that is desirable (i.e., can be sold). I sympathize with Harry who is supporting his family and Callan wants to live off their art. When I’m feeling stuck and unbrilliant, I, too, want an easy button that will help me create, get words on paper and out into the world. And right now, there does feel like a “pill” in AI*, of course. When it feels like your creativity has been commoditized, taking the “easy way out” becomes more and more seductive.

While Harry sacrifices others for his success, Callan puts their own life in danger for their art. After Callan is dragged into the lake by unseen forces, they are determined to still see the end of the artist’s retreat out. “…[Callan] wouldn’t leave the program under any circumstances. She couldn’t leave. Not if it meant there was a chance she could create without the incessant buzzing of the real world always at her ear. If that was the prize, she would win. At any cost.” Callan’s confrontation with the shadows at the lake certainly doesn’t feel like an “easy” pill like Harry’s does. But she, too, is lured in to take a chance that puts her own life at risk for the promise of artistic success.

The Moral?

I think sometimes, when we talk about media or content consumption, us creatives who are feeding the content machine (historically, algorithms, now, AI training) feel like we’re the ones being consumed. Is there comfort to be found in either of these pieces? In typical American Horror Story fashion, Red Tide ends with (spoilers) the death of Harry and his daughter continuing her horrific murder spree to take out the competition and become the best violinist in the world (that’s a whole other essay: how the ways in which we pursue success are being watched by the children who are following us). And then, of course, Harry’s agent Ursula is scattering the pills like candy to people all over LA in order to find creative genius to sell to the TV execs, not caring who she turns into a bloodsucking monster as long as she is getting paid.

So, I suppose that the comfort here is more of the cautionary tale variety, that as long as you don’t sell your soul, no one will come collect?

In What Feeds the Lake, the ending is much more hopeful. After Callan’s final confrontation with the lake and the monsters within it (spoilers), which is their past self, they get to the studio and paint. “The painting had felt like an exorcism; a thing dredged up from Callan’s soul rather than from a collection of paints on a palette. It was far from finished, but already Callan felt lighter without the full weight of it on their soul.”

Callan’s epilogue includes art that “stuns fans” and they feel confident and secure in a way that has you cheering them on as they fly from New York and their implied artistic success back to Montana for another winter term (and then permanent settled life with Professor Crane, who didn’t deserve the bad vibes turns out). “Now it was clear to Callan, even if it was impossible for anyone else to understand. The point wasn’t for the world to understand. The point was for the world to witness what could not be understood, to make space for the questions even if no answers followed, to accept the dark spaces between understanding for the art that it was.” By being their whole, authentic self and creating art that comes from the soul, Callan doesn’t necessarily have to cater to the world’s tastes in art, but to their own to find success.

So: What I’m taking away is that when you feel that pressure to publish or perish, or when the writer’s block is so anxiety-producing that you feel desperate to do anything or try anything to get it to go away, or when you feel like everything you produce is both garbage and also going straight into the hungry maw of the algorithm:

Remember to feed your art your soul before you feed your soul to anyone—or anything—else.

Sorry this was so long; go watch Red Tide and read What Feeds the Lake, you won’t regret it!

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*Just making sure it’s said that I do not use AI to write and nor will I ever!