100 Things Challenge (#3): Confidence and the Wimpy Writer
Today, I received good news about a paper I'd written for my recent grad school class, but for the first time in a long while, I'd been very nervous about something I'd written. It's that comfortable old dread, that sudden realization of the possibility that one has labored hard and still produced a dud. As I clicked through the university's
( Read more... )
A while back, I overread someone who said something along the lines of "Not actually surprising: Good writers tend to have ambitious tastes and high expectations; they compare to the best, find themselves lacking, and thus work hard on improving themselves. The bad writers tend to have lower tastes and expectations. Accordingly, they compare themselves to those most like themselves, find themselves equal, and thus think they're already great..." No idea where or who that was, but it rang true. We are wimpy because we only ever orient upwards, and never trust ourselves to be good enough...
A while back, German fandom was shaken (with laughter) at a writer bitching in his blog about another blogger's (negative) review of his (actually published) book. The rest of the blog was full of backwards opinions, so admittedly I didn't look at his book (and later, other books of his) in an entirely neutral state of mind, but the thing is:
The book is AWFUL. Badly in need of a good editor, and even such a one would have had a hard time turning that drivel into something at least readable. It made Twilight look good. The other book, about an Iron Age women with red-and white striped hair making her way from Frankia to Jerusalem in search of the Holy Grail, was just as ridiculous. With the added bonus of being preceded by a foreword of "Everything described in this book is based on science, archaeology and anthropology so don't you dare to question is".
One part of myself just weeps because it is so awful, and how can that guy (who must be quite the pitiful person, really) get his drivel published instead of realising how lousy it is and weeping into his pillow, the way I'd do?
The other half of me is jealous of the sheer nerve of that guy. I mean, how often do I ask "How come this drivel is getting published while so many awesome fan writers I know don't get recognised?" And part of the answer is, of course, that we just don't dare to send our stuff to publishers in the first place. (Of course, some of us do, and still don't get recognised... :() And it's not because we're doing fanfic, and you can't publish fanfic - after all, you can file off the serial numbers and change the names, cf. 50 Shades of Grey - it's because we don't think we're good enough.
Did all my rambling have a point? Well, yes - basically: I agree with your observations, including your conclusion. I just wish that it were possible to combine wimpiness and confidence in some constructive manner...
Reply
Yes, well put! I know, when I reread something I've written, I have this ideal of what I want it to be. I don't even know if that ideal is attainable, but when it [inevitably] falls short, I keep picking at it and working at it.
The book is AWFUL.
This seems so often sadly the case of published fiction. I remember reading The Sword of Shannara for a class one time and thinking, "How did this crap even get published??" and the author went on to publish much more and, apparently, be well-respected enough in the fantasy genre that his book was being taught in university courses. :^| I was capable of doing better when I was in high school.
I mean, how often do I ask "How come this drivel is getting published while so many awesome fan writers I know don't get recognised?"
You're right that most of us never do try. And sending stuff out is hard work. And rarely satisfying. The best publications often have acceptance rates around 1%, so they're turning away a lot of excellent fiction. Of course, a rejection is a rejection, and most of us never know if a story was immediately discarded or something that the editor thought, "I can see publishing this, just not right now," or if the story was never even read at all.
I wonder, too, if some of it has to do with the fact that a lot of Tolkien fanfic writers do literary-quality writing and the fantasy genre doesn't tend to publish this kind of writing. For example, I'm reading A Game of Thrones right now, and while it's entertaining, it's not great writing. I know many, many authors in the Tolkien community who could do much better. I remember when the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthology was still being published, there were some gorgeous stories that were clearly fantasy but also amazingly written, yet few big-name fantasy authors were represented in its pages. (Neil Gaiman and Ursula K. LeGuin are the only two I can remember offhand who were). I don't know. I'm not intimately familiar with the fantasy market, but it does make me wonder when I see authors like GRRM being hailed as these amazing writers while really great writing is being picked up only by small presses or not at all.
Reply
I have to admit I didn't even find it entertaining - just frustrating. But that's a sleeping rant that'll wake up and get written some other time! I agree that I know many writers who could do waaay better in our (relatively small) fandom alone. I also suspect that GRRM is one of those Confident Guys and just manages to project his certainty outwards!
Of course, a rejection is a rejection, and most of us never know if a story was immediately discarded or something that the editor thought, "I can see publishing this, just not right now," or if the story was never even read at all.
Yup... and some of us live in such holy fear of rejection that we don't even bother in the first place. While someone else with (maybe) a healthier dose of self-regard does bother and might just fill a gap...
Reply
Leave a comment