Squeeing about your own fiction?
It is apparently rude to go on about how awesome your own stories are.
Yet I do it all the time.
I think this is one of the places where it's really helpful to distinguish between the content of the story and the artistry of the text. I pretty much never compliment my own writing. I think I'm basically competent, and sometimes I churn out a line I really like, but mostly I lack poetry, I lack finesse, I lack elegantly gilded turns of phrase or any wordsmithing that inspires awe, and I kinda suck at things like plot and pacing and action and so on.
But damn do I love the stories I write. I love the characters, the relationships, the worlds, the events, the ideas, all of that. If I didn't, why would I spend so much time writing about them? (And complaining about how difficult and bitchy they can be?)
Let's say you go over to someone's house, and they have forsythias in their yard, and you comment, "Wow, those are so yellow and bright and pretty!" The person could reply, "OMG, aren't they? I love them so much! They make me happy whenever I come out here!" Or they could answer, "Thank you, yes, I carefully placed them in exactly the right spot to catch the most sunshine and it's complete genius to have done so, if I do say so myself." In the second case, they're boasting, and in the first case, you're both just admiring the forsythias together.
If you ever happen to see me going on about how AWESOME something I'm writing is, how hilariously funny or touchingly tragic or smokin' hot it is, that's all I'm doing, complimenting some forsythias. I'm certainly not talking about how my deathless prose is better than anyone else's, I'm just talking about how much I enjoy thinking of the things that entertain me, the stories that I watch in my head.
Those stories are my bestest friends and my babies and my main thought processes, but I don't think it's all that appropriate to praise me for the ideas. I'm not really responsible for my stories anymore than I'm responsible for my eye color or the shape of my hands. That's just how I look, and that's just how I think, and it's not necessarily an accomplishment. I didn't really choose it. I might think my eyes are a really nice color and my fingers are stupidly short, but neither of those facts can be used to judge my skill or decisions.
Where you can judge my skill and my decisions is in the way I actually wrote the story, and I think I'd be the first person on earth to say that while I sometime make good decisions, I also sometimes make poor ones. I've never written something perfect.
Actually, I do think I ought to be able to be proud of myself for doing something well. Pride is a good thing. Vanity and boasting aren't, but if we can't say what we enjoy about ourselves and our work, we'd all be pretty sad people.
Yet I do it all the time.
I think this is one of the places where it's really helpful to distinguish between the content of the story and the artistry of the text. I pretty much never compliment my own writing. I think I'm basically competent, and sometimes I churn out a line I really like, but mostly I lack poetry, I lack finesse, I lack elegantly gilded turns of phrase or any wordsmithing that inspires awe, and I kinda suck at things like plot and pacing and action and so on.
But damn do I love the stories I write. I love the characters, the relationships, the worlds, the events, the ideas, all of that. If I didn't, why would I spend so much time writing about them? (And complaining about how difficult and bitchy they can be?)
Let's say you go over to someone's house, and they have forsythias in their yard, and you comment, "Wow, those are so yellow and bright and pretty!" The person could reply, "OMG, aren't they? I love them so much! They make me happy whenever I come out here!" Or they could answer, "Thank you, yes, I carefully placed them in exactly the right spot to catch the most sunshine and it's complete genius to have done so, if I do say so myself." In the second case, they're boasting, and in the first case, you're both just admiring the forsythias together.
If you ever happen to see me going on about how AWESOME something I'm writing is, how hilariously funny or touchingly tragic or smokin' hot it is, that's all I'm doing, complimenting some forsythias. I'm certainly not talking about how my deathless prose is better than anyone else's, I'm just talking about how much I enjoy thinking of the things that entertain me, the stories that I watch in my head.
Those stories are my bestest friends and my babies and my main thought processes, but I don't think it's all that appropriate to praise me for the ideas. I'm not really responsible for my stories anymore than I'm responsible for my eye color or the shape of my hands. That's just how I look, and that's just how I think, and it's not necessarily an accomplishment. I didn't really choose it. I might think my eyes are a really nice color and my fingers are stupidly short, but neither of those facts can be used to judge my skill or decisions.
Where you can judge my skill and my decisions is in the way I actually wrote the story, and I think I'd be the first person on earth to say that while I sometime make good decisions, I also sometimes make poor ones. I've never written something perfect.
Actually, I do think I ought to be able to be proud of myself for doing something well. Pride is a good thing. Vanity and boasting aren't, but if we can't say what we enjoy about ourselves and our work, we'd all be pretty sad people.