Writing insecurity
Wow, I didn't update yesterday. And look, the world didn't come to an end. It was just sort of a busy day around here, and I guess I didn't have anything to say. The Fabulous Nancy was over to catch up on Doctor Who. We made it up through "The Christmas Invasion."
Is everyone recovered from last night's "Lost?" I don't know if I am.
Well, my first Doctor Who fic in ten years was a big success. That's a relief. I always wonder how something I wrote will be received when I write in a new community of people, most of whom don't know me. When you write for a long time in one fandom and become known for it, you start to get that little voice that wonders if people are reacting to your work because it's good or just because it's OMG POU etc. This is why famous authors write under pseudonyms. You need that reassurance that your writing got noticed on its merits, and the best way to test that is to hit the reset button and go somewhere nobody knows you and see if it gets noticed AGAIN on its merits.
Plus there was the added stress this time that "A Thousand Languages" was a real stylistic departure for me. It was very different from my other writing. It was very clipped and present-tense and oblique. In addition, it was very dialogue-light, which is really weird for me since dialogue is (I hope) one of my strengths as a writer (at least, people often cite it as such).
It's that same old writing insecurity. Am I any good, or am I coasting on my street rep? Would strangers react to my writing the way that my longtime readers do? It's like a craving for always more food for that fragile little writer-ego that had better toughen itself up before "Third" is thrust out of the short bus and into the harsh hands of editors who will rip it to shreds.
Now, I'm not fishing for all of you to tell me how great I am. I'm just having a bit of a ponder on how writers always secretly think that they suck. And I think that's good. I've always believed that you can't write well if you think you're awesome at it. You always have to think that you suck. I'm relatively confident that I'm at least competent as a writer. I can keep my POV consistent, I can handle verb-tense agreement. But there's some kind of alchemy that occurs in places that you can't reach with Strunk & White that turns competence into talent and talent into genius that can't be taught or learned. It just rises from the ashes of a thousand rough drafts like a phoenix and it might only last for a paragraph or two before it bursts into flames and you're back in "dark and stormy night" territory. I've had moments of sheer transcendence while writing, times when I felt galvanized and immortal, like Prometheus bringing fire to the masses, and I kind of forgot who I was and I just became the story I was telling or the scene I was describing.
That was cool. It's happened, like, twice in my life. I consider myself lucky that it was that many. Anybody who does anything creative knows what I'm talking about. But you can't base a career on those moments, or your self-image as a writer on your ability to reach them.
The worst part about those transcendent moments? The discovery that what you wrote while you felt that way was not actually all that good.
Is everyone recovered from last night's "Lost?" I don't know if I am.
Well, my first Doctor Who fic in ten years was a big success. That's a relief. I always wonder how something I wrote will be received when I write in a new community of people, most of whom don't know me. When you write for a long time in one fandom and become known for it, you start to get that little voice that wonders if people are reacting to your work because it's good or just because it's OMG POU etc. This is why famous authors write under pseudonyms. You need that reassurance that your writing got noticed on its merits, and the best way to test that is to hit the reset button and go somewhere nobody knows you and see if it gets noticed AGAIN on its merits.
Plus there was the added stress this time that "A Thousand Languages" was a real stylistic departure for me. It was very different from my other writing. It was very clipped and present-tense and oblique. In addition, it was very dialogue-light, which is really weird for me since dialogue is (I hope) one of my strengths as a writer (at least, people often cite it as such).
It's that same old writing insecurity. Am I any good, or am I coasting on my street rep? Would strangers react to my writing the way that my longtime readers do? It's like a craving for always more food for that fragile little writer-ego that had better toughen itself up before "Third" is thrust out of the short bus and into the harsh hands of editors who will rip it to shreds.
Now, I'm not fishing for all of you to tell me how great I am. I'm just having a bit of a ponder on how writers always secretly think that they suck. And I think that's good. I've always believed that you can't write well if you think you're awesome at it. You always have to think that you suck. I'm relatively confident that I'm at least competent as a writer. I can keep my POV consistent, I can handle verb-tense agreement. But there's some kind of alchemy that occurs in places that you can't reach with Strunk & White that turns competence into talent and talent into genius that can't be taught or learned. It just rises from the ashes of a thousand rough drafts like a phoenix and it might only last for a paragraph or two before it bursts into flames and you're back in "dark and stormy night" territory. I've had moments of sheer transcendence while writing, times when I felt galvanized and immortal, like Prometheus bringing fire to the masses, and I kind of forgot who I was and I just became the story I was telling or the scene I was describing.
That was cool. It's happened, like, twice in my life. I consider myself lucky that it was that many. Anybody who does anything creative knows what I'm talking about. But you can't base a career on those moments, or your self-image as a writer on your ability to reach them.
The worst part about those transcendent moments? The discovery that what you wrote while you felt that way was not actually all that good.