Writing 101 -- The Darkest Day
If you can read this, you're on a new filter. Joy to the world, joy to you and me.
No work today and probably no work tomorrow as well. The shoulder is slowly on the mend, but the idea that I was going to be able to manhandle a 20-ton bus around the streets of Sacramento was a blindly optimistic one. I'm not really sure what my doctor had in mind for my healing powers, but I don't even have Wolverine's hair any more, much less his other kewl powerz. So I went to the dentist today and got four fillings done, then took a double dose of painkillers and headed home.
The shoulder's not hurting quite as much today.
I haven't done any writing today, and I probably won't tomorrow as well. That's okay. I know that writing professors, professionals and seemingly everyone else in the industry says that you have to write every day, but I don't subscribe to that belief. Personally, I think you should write when you feel the urge to do so, when your muse whacks you upside the head and demands you get to work, and not before. Why? Easy. Bad writing breeds bad writing, and if you hypnotize yourself with this unshakeable belief that you must produce every day, you will eventually get into the habit of producing junk.
Yes, it's one of those posts I do when chemically altered. Feel free to bail out now.
I'm pretty sure that this changes once you get to the point where you are writing for pay, but as of June 26, 2007, I am not. I am a glorified amateur with one hell of a back catalogue in terms of volume and brothers and sisters, that's all I am. Thankfully, however, what I have been doing lately is a lot of of reading, and for me over the last three years or so, that represents a serious departure.
If you decide that you're going to try doing writing as not just something that you love but something that you're going to actually try to get into print lately, there will come a very unlovely time in your life that no writer wants to talk about. I'm referring to that terrible day when you walk into a bookstore and instead of that happy, semi-dreamy bubble of ebullience you get in the pit your stomach, you instead feel the gnawing pangs of disillusion. The day when you look at a glut of manga books eight racks long by six units high and wonder to yourself, "What the fuck? Like, what the fucking fuck? Am I barking up the wrong tree, or are they?"
Shitty, huh? It's true, though. If you stay in this racket for long enough and you keep plugging away long enough and you keep going down to the bookstore to do research for your next target long enough, there is going to come a day when you say, "I don't want to go in there. Man, I used to love going to the bookstore but now, I don't because I know what I'm going to see. I'm going to see a bunch of people who have gotten over and I have not and yeah, I understand that this industry is not only fickle but horrificaly subjective... and it doesn't make me feel any better."
That's a terrible day because damnit, I love books. I love the bookstore. I love the stateliness of its environment, the promise in almost every aisle of a good story waiting to be discovered. When that day comes, it's like a longtime Catholic waking up one day and feeling as though the church has turned against them. It's like getting a diagnosis from the doctor that the crawling sensation in your gut is actually soul cancer, and that's one of the most terribly introspective days in your career.
The day when you wonder why you even do it any more. The day when you begin to hate the bookstore.
I know why it is that I do it; the submission, I mean. Not the writing. That one hasn't changed at its core since I first put a pen to paper... I do it because I love it, the simplest answer around. As for the submission... shit, it would be much easier to walk away from that aspect, wouldn't it? I know I'm just as good as some of the folks you'll find at the local Barnes & Noble; I no longer need the approval of a faceless editor a couple thousand miles away to know that I belong to this club. I've paid my dues and bled many night away doing this, and I know I have the chops.
Yeah, it would be easier to walk away. Hell, it's not like I need the money (not that there's much to be made in this racket, anyway). However, some time during the last seventeen years, I passed my own personal event horizon on this process. Not submitting wasn't an option any more, because I had done it so much that stopping now would have been throwing all that time on the scrap heap, and the simple fact of the matter is that I have succeeded at everything I have set my mind to in my life.
I wanted to be a competent musican, and I was.
I wanted to be a good artist, and I was.
I wanted to be a good baseball pitcher, and I was.
I wanted to get good grades in high school, and I did.
I'm a stupendously stubborn Capricon, and not quitting on this wasn't an option. To do that, I was going to have to keep going into the bookstore and sitting down with that copy of Writer's Market to copy the information down, and I did it even though I was beginning hate the bookstore. As an offshoot of that, I was reading less and less... until I got my love back. I found new authors to enjoy, ones that inspired and uplifted me. Damnit, I started looking forward to going to the bookstore again.
I know, this was a rambler and rehasher even by my standards. Meh, so be it. This has been on my mind for a long time, and I wanted to share this with you, if for no other reason that maybe someday, you'll look back on this and say, "Damn. I'm not alone."
Here's to getting our grooves back, people.
No work today and probably no work tomorrow as well. The shoulder is slowly on the mend, but the idea that I was going to be able to manhandle a 20-ton bus around the streets of Sacramento was a blindly optimistic one. I'm not really sure what my doctor had in mind for my healing powers, but I don't even have Wolverine's hair any more, much less his other kewl powerz. So I went to the dentist today and got four fillings done, then took a double dose of painkillers and headed home.
The shoulder's not hurting quite as much today.
I haven't done any writing today, and I probably won't tomorrow as well. That's okay. I know that writing professors, professionals and seemingly everyone else in the industry says that you have to write every day, but I don't subscribe to that belief. Personally, I think you should write when you feel the urge to do so, when your muse whacks you upside the head and demands you get to work, and not before. Why? Easy. Bad writing breeds bad writing, and if you hypnotize yourself with this unshakeable belief that you must produce every day, you will eventually get into the habit of producing junk.
Yes, it's one of those posts I do when chemically altered. Feel free to bail out now.
I'm pretty sure that this changes once you get to the point where you are writing for pay, but as of June 26, 2007, I am not. I am a glorified amateur with one hell of a back catalogue in terms of volume and brothers and sisters, that's all I am. Thankfully, however, what I have been doing lately is a lot of of reading, and for me over the last three years or so, that represents a serious departure.
If you decide that you're going to try doing writing as not just something that you love but something that you're going to actually try to get into print lately, there will come a very unlovely time in your life that no writer wants to talk about. I'm referring to that terrible day when you walk into a bookstore and instead of that happy, semi-dreamy bubble of ebullience you get in the pit your stomach, you instead feel the gnawing pangs of disillusion. The day when you look at a glut of manga books eight racks long by six units high and wonder to yourself, "What the fuck? Like, what the fucking fuck? Am I barking up the wrong tree, or are they?"
Shitty, huh? It's true, though. If you stay in this racket for long enough and you keep plugging away long enough and you keep going down to the bookstore to do research for your next target long enough, there is going to come a day when you say, "I don't want to go in there. Man, I used to love going to the bookstore but now, I don't because I know what I'm going to see. I'm going to see a bunch of people who have gotten over and I have not and yeah, I understand that this industry is not only fickle but horrificaly subjective... and it doesn't make me feel any better."
That's a terrible day because damnit, I love books. I love the bookstore. I love the stateliness of its environment, the promise in almost every aisle of a good story waiting to be discovered. When that day comes, it's like a longtime Catholic waking up one day and feeling as though the church has turned against them. It's like getting a diagnosis from the doctor that the crawling sensation in your gut is actually soul cancer, and that's one of the most terribly introspective days in your career.
The day when you wonder why you even do it any more. The day when you begin to hate the bookstore.
I know why it is that I do it; the submission, I mean. Not the writing. That one hasn't changed at its core since I first put a pen to paper... I do it because I love it, the simplest answer around. As for the submission... shit, it would be much easier to walk away from that aspect, wouldn't it? I know I'm just as good as some of the folks you'll find at the local Barnes & Noble; I no longer need the approval of a faceless editor a couple thousand miles away to know that I belong to this club. I've paid my dues and bled many night away doing this, and I know I have the chops.
Yeah, it would be easier to walk away. Hell, it's not like I need the money (not that there's much to be made in this racket, anyway). However, some time during the last seventeen years, I passed my own personal event horizon on this process. Not submitting wasn't an option any more, because I had done it so much that stopping now would have been throwing all that time on the scrap heap, and the simple fact of the matter is that I have succeeded at everything I have set my mind to in my life.
I wanted to be a competent musican, and I was.
I wanted to be a good artist, and I was.
I wanted to be a good baseball pitcher, and I was.
I wanted to get good grades in high school, and I did.
I'm a stupendously stubborn Capricon, and not quitting on this wasn't an option. To do that, I was going to have to keep going into the bookstore and sitting down with that copy of Writer's Market to copy the information down, and I did it even though I was beginning hate the bookstore. As an offshoot of that, I was reading less and less... until I got my love back. I found new authors to enjoy, ones that inspired and uplifted me. Damnit, I started looking forward to going to the bookstore again.
I know, this was a rambler and rehasher even by my standards. Meh, so be it. This has been on my mind for a long time, and I wanted to share this with you, if for no other reason that maybe someday, you'll look back on this and say, "Damn. I'm not alone."
Here's to getting our grooves back, people.