Merry Christmas and I still haven't stopped being a shitty person

[apiphile]

Recent activities have seen a certain backsliding in maturity: watched the entire first disk of my Christmas present from Lindsay, which was the Horrible Histories box set (aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh), have accidentally fallen into rereading the few Asterix books I have and also making Jess read them (I am an expert at looking past the GINORMOUS RACISM

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

Merry Christmas! The presents sound lovely! Ginormous racism aside, I really like the Asterix books! I read them a lot when I was a kid and learning French.

I definitely agree that the problem is your particularly harsh and one-sided standard for what makes you a ginormous wanker. Sadly, recongizing that doesn't fix it, but it's definitely the part of your brain declaring you a wanker for taking a class in things. (Maybe some of it is that you don't want to turn into your parents who took classes instead of doing useful and necessary stuff like being there for you or paying for necessities, and a judgy corner of your brain doesn't acknowledge that it might be possible for you take classes in addition to useful and necessary stuff? I can imagine that watching your parents pour money into classes and retreats when there wasn't consistenly money for rent might make it easy to see that stuff negatively

[apiphile]

I can imagine that watching your parents pour money into classes and retreats when there wasn't consistenly money for rent might make it easy to see that stuff negatively.

It doesn't help, but I'm peculiarly obsessed with the idea that Proper Writers don't need that shit. :(

The problem with the free groups is that they haven't really tended to give me much in the way of helpful feedback, or feedback, which is what I'm after. I need... trimming? Or directing? Or someone with a big stick to make me work harder.

[wolfy_writing]

A lot of people like to come up with the formula for how Proper Writers work, when the reality is all over the place. (The only consistent distinction I've seen is "Eventually writes something" versus "Literally never gets past the intending to write something stage", and you write many things.) There are definitely many Proper Writers who take classes and learn from teachers. You can find self-taught people in almost anything artistic (I don't think you get self-taught ballerinas), but there's a reason why most people trying to work seriously at something creative take classes.

I think it's a really good and useful idea. It'd help a lot with your frustration about feedback, and offer you some that's more what you're looking for.

[apiphile]

True, true. Perhaps I am surrounding myself with the Wrong Writers. ;)

I NEED TO FIND SOMEONE WHO WILL TELL ME HOW TO UNFUCK MY WORK

[wolfy_writing]

I'm pretty sure I count as Not A Proper Writing. I tend to write in sprees and binges and couldn't even keep up with "Write at least once a week".