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
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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.
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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...
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