How internet response to television is changing my writing process
I have this novelette that I'm struggling to finish right now. Struggling partly because the ending just does not work, at least not yet, so I'm trying different endings, different sentences, to get something that works.
As I do this, I keep glancing back at the earlier parts of the novelette, checking, checking, obsessively checking --
For nitpicks.
And as I'm doing so, I realize that I can almost hear them, the voices in the back of my head -
And they sound like negative, snarky comments from Twitter, Tor and various internet forums. Because I know just how much readers/viewers can snark and nitpick and criticize anything.
It's not necessarily bad - I do need to find mistakes and errors in my work before I shoot it out to editors and try to sell it. But at the same time, it can be paralyzing, and it can distract me from the inner voice that's giving me the narrative I need to fill up the other holes in this novelette (it's not just the ending, although that's the major problem at the moment).
I realize authors had inner self-critics pre internet - I certainly did - but my previous inner self-critic had a distinct academic tone, a more serious literary tone, not "I LOLed." "Like, seriously." "This author is crap. I'm out of here."
Silence, I try to tell myself. This thing is nowhere near ready to appear on the Internet yet.
And then I take another look at the ending, and try not to type, "This story is crap. I'm out of here."
As I do this, I keep glancing back at the earlier parts of the novelette, checking, checking, obsessively checking --
For nitpicks.
And as I'm doing so, I realize that I can almost hear them, the voices in the back of my head -
And they sound like negative, snarky comments from Twitter, Tor and various internet forums. Because I know just how much readers/viewers can snark and nitpick and criticize anything.
It's not necessarily bad - I do need to find mistakes and errors in my work before I shoot it out to editors and try to sell it. But at the same time, it can be paralyzing, and it can distract me from the inner voice that's giving me the narrative I need to fill up the other holes in this novelette (it's not just the ending, although that's the major problem at the moment).
I realize authors had inner self-critics pre internet - I certainly did - but my previous inner self-critic had a distinct academic tone, a more serious literary tone, not "I LOLed." "Like, seriously." "This author is crap. I'm out of here."
Silence, I try to tell myself. This thing is nowhere near ready to appear on the Internet yet.
And then I take another look at the ending, and try not to type, "This story is crap. I'm out of here."