100 Things Challenge (#3): Confidence and the Wimpy Writer

[dawn_felagund]

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

Comments

[engarian]

I fully admit that I am a writing wimp and that I am deathly afraid of crit because I have such a hard time putting my work "out there" to begin with. It may seem odd - after all I blog 6-days a week, constantly work on writing fanfic and my O-fic, and I have almost 100 stories posted on Fairie alone. But it took, and still takes, a lot of effort for me to put my work out there because I don't have a support mechanism at all. My DH despises my writing and actively discourages me from working at it, and my friends who I trust for the occasional cheer leading and back patting that I sometimes need don't live close to me, certainly not close enough to contact "off the cuff

[huinare]

iMy DH despises my writing and actively discourages me from working at it

?! =(

[engarian]

Yeah. He's really great in other areas, but when it comes to supporting my creative endeavors, I'm left on my own to sink or swim. Or I only get negative feedback. By now I'm used to it, but I don't have to like it :-) I think that's one reason why my f-list friends are so important to me.

- Erulisse (one L)

[dawn_felagund]

For me, a piece has to be ready for critique. I never request critique on my Tolkien pieces--at least, I have not to this point--simply because I rarely want to spend any significant time on revising them and it isn't fair to request critique and then not use what I'm given. (I do revise my Tolkien pieces occasionally, but it's a spur-of-the-moment thing, when I feel like rereading or working on a particular piece, whereas betas/critiquers would be perfectly in line to expect something more expedient from me

[myaru]

You know, I thought that gaining confidence in writing would mean an end to that crippling, gut-wrenching feeling that came when I put a story out there, whether on LJ or over to an editor, but it didn't. Maybe it's not as intense, but confidence that one has some skill is apparently not confidence that other people will see it that way. When you send it out, it's not just about the work anymore; it's about every single reader and what they think. It's one thing to feel euphoria over finishing a piece that seems decent, but putting it out there seems to require a different kind of confidence

[dawn_felagund]

I think you bring up a great point, which is that every reader will necessarily see a story slightly differently. When I was active in the Critters workshop, I estimated that about 10% of the readers who critiqued my work didn't "get" the story in some major way. That was pretty consistent among the stories I put forward. Of course, I could (and should) look at how that might be my fault as a writer: what I didn't do or could do better. However, it's also very possible--especially in a workshop where one can boost one's own stories up the queue by critiquing a boatload of stories in one week--that the readers were in a hurry and didn't really spend the time with the story that they should have. Especially when the critique itself appeared to have been written in haste! :) So I never worried about it much

[tarion_anarore]

I actually quit Creative Writing I after a day in college...not because of any of Those Guys, but because of the teacher (a woman)! Not much point in me saying I'm not a confident writer (we all know this ;), but I thought maybe the class would help me expand the types of writing I was doing... Silly me. There was a LONG list of what we would NOT be writing in the class, to the point where I thought "Good God, what's left?!" Clearly one of those teachers whose goal was to tear down 98% of the class as bad writers, elevate her favorite one or two as great, and most of all, elevate herself as exceptional. A far cry from my high school creative writing class, where we wrote everything from poetry to plays, including a fanfic (though it wasn't called that ;) assignment based on the film adaptation of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory! Needless to say, I was disappointed