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The last nearly three months have been filled with writing fear. Oh, I can write fan fic and have been, but not my own stuff. I feel paralyzed, like all I write is total crap.
I think I'm finally working through it a bit. I've done up a new summary for this book I've been toiling with, changed the character names a few times and I've changed the ( Read more... )
I've been reading tons of essays by writers for my thesis, and it seems that writing is as joyful as it is painful, even for those who have been publishing for years. I remember reading Joyce Carol Oates' essay, and she writes how much she fears death when she's writing a novel, as she asks herself if this is the book she will not finish.
Those fears say a lot, I think. Writing can be seen as a highly codified (conscious and unconscious) metaphor of how the writer understands the world and/or how he thinks others understand it. I think that choosing to write fiction infers also choosing to live a rich emotional life and to accept to face ourselves, our fears, our shadows as well as our strenghts every time we open the document/notebook. This cannot be easy every day.
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I think the hardest thing to learn is to give ourselves some slack, and to find a way to be creative and playful when the writing fizzles for a while - maybe stories just need to be in the *cooler* for a while.
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I've thought a lot about what you said about expectations and what I want out of what I'm writing. That was more helpful to me than I can say. It helped me to focus more on what I was trying to squeeze out of my brain.
That's why I mentioned Steinbeck's Appendix in the The Acts of King Arthur. I saw you were going to try and read that. Definitely check out his letters at the back: even Steinbeck felt this way and that helps a lot. It's interesting that she wonders if it'll be her last book. I catch myself thinking 'if I die before I finish this, someone will read this and wonder why I bothered and where I was trying to go with it.' I fret a lot about someone going through all my notes and ideas that are totally nonsensical to anyone else. Stupid.
Your last paragraph: very true. It makes me think of the times I wake up with a scene fully written in my head, which strikes me as strange. I like to write about what bothers me, things I don't even like to look at or think about when normally confronted with.
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How we choose to embody it, however, remains where we have more control. You say that it's dumb to be anxious when writing because you are doing this for yourself. I totally get what you say - we write for ourselves, absolutely. But you are not writing a journal or personal thoughts about your life. You are writing a novel, and I'm guessing you'd like to send it to a publisher eventually. That would mean you are also writing to be read...even if this is in a year or three. So your alleged dumbness? :) Hm, doesn't feel like that to me. I think you're feeling perhaps a bit more acutely the *is writing a worthy activity or not?* dilemma right now. And since writing is so personal and so exciting and just plain good, this question remains a hard one to answer.
You write that you fear wasting your time when writing. Would you have the same feeling if you already had a book out?
About expectations: I'm happy it helped! Whenever there is intention, there might be expectations. :)
I don't think it's stupid at all to be in the process of writing and fear that others will not find the uniqueness of it. I think it's human. It's your process and your story. How could someone see exactly what you had in mind but you? However, and I think this is really important, someone who understands why writing is important to you would recognize the importance of its existence within you and its proof on paper. This is in a nutshell - for me at least - one of the ways we do recognize a writer. :)
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