[Caption: “It must be yours. I have no imagination.”
Cartoon by Charles Barsotti in The New Yorker, November 27, 2006]
The end of a year heralds all sort of soul-searching not just among writers, of course, but among everyone else. Did I do everything I could do? Did I do it as well as I could? What did I overlook? How did I fail? And so on.
And yet — at least for (re-)beginners — the professional angst of writers and other creative people seems especially exquisite. We have a product, after all, a product we’ve spent many lonely hours producing. With no assurance of “success” (however we choose to measure that). With no firm idea, in many cases, why we embarked on the latest project (or the career itself, for that matter).
We have to finish the work in order to sell the work — just to find out if it’s at all salable or even remotely interesting to people in a position to get it “out there.”
I mean, I myself know this is how it works but it terrifies me.
(This explains why writers slip quite easily into blogging mode. Of course it’s “writing” or at least “practice,” so we offer that excuse (barely a reason). But it also and I think more importantly offers at least the tiny hope that our work will be validated, immediately, post by post by post. Thank God for commenters, eh?)
In recent days, I’ve read numerous posts by blogging writers which allude to this problem — too numerous to enumerate, too flat-out thick. The whole gaggle of questions hangs in the air, like excessive humidity.
Omigod I just wasted a whole year… Can’t believe NaNoWriMo came and went and since then I’ve done absolutely nothing… Not a single agent has requested even a partial from me… Every story or poem or non-fic proposal I’ve sent out has come back with a “Sorry, not for us” note… A black hole… Productivity? Ha!
All the second-guessing would depress and alarm me even more if I myself hadn’t already thought along these lines.
But you know what? Maybe it’s not so bad after all.
One reason why the Lord of the Rings trilogy succeeds so well, I think, is that it grants us access not only to the events of the quest but to the minds of the questers. More than the action, the characters’ reactions matter. Frodo’s finally accomplishing his goal might be just as thrilling if he’d never looked back, never hesitated or wavered or tried to duck responsibility… but it would be one seriously sucky story by contrast — exactly because we know how difficult it was for him psychologically.
More than that, though, maybe the uncertainties and difficulties of writing, especially for publication, are the whole point. The system is meant to break our spirit and until our spirit is broken, we’re not “there.”
In a comment on Kate Lord Brown’s What Kate Did Next blog post touching on all of this, I think I said best what I mean here:
When you become so discouraged you don’t give a shit anymore, then you will write something worth giving a shit about.
Maybe I’m just whistling Dixie on this. But I don’t think so. Putting one pretty word after another, in one pretty sentence after another; tracking submissions and researching agents; finally getting published, published well, published happily — all those barriers are just a writer’s orcish hordes, poisonous fens, and fires of Mordor.
But until we stop thinking in terms of Dream Goals, other than doing the work and then finishing the work well — until then, maybe we’re all just whistling Dixie.
Sara says
Jules sent me here. Thanks. Needed this today.
For years (pre-publication) I wrote in my journal that I felt like I was being “ploughed up,” but I had no idea when anything would grow worth tending. But I keep forgetting that even after we’ve reached some success, the process has to occur over and over and over again and we are never immune. Only more aware. Or not, in my case. But this post helped. Thanks.
marta says
Some days I think I ought to pitch the work, the laptop, the art, the whole clutter and pile of stuff in the fires of Mordor and think the world a better place because of it.
moonrat says
thank god for commenters, indeed.
i definitely do my best writing when i am angry and/or miserable. depression and lack of self-confidence produce much better results, i believe, than self-satisfaction. self-satisfied authors end up like Orhan Pamuk. (i don’t mean nobel prizewinning. i meant more along the lines of insufferable.)
John says
Sara: Hey, happy you stopped by. Glad this helped, too — after posting it, I half-decided it risked depressing or pissing off people even further. :)
marta: I laughed when I read that. But, umm, you DO know that’s just the sh!tbird on your shoulder talking.
moonie: I confess — you sent me searching for info on Orhan Pamuk. Regrettably seems to be another of those authors (it’s a growing list) of whom I tell enthusiasts, my shoulders all a-slump, No, gee, I keep meaning to read her/his work but haven’t gotten around to it…
Btw, you really do need to acquire another pseudonym which will let you write negative reviews. (Well, okay, for all I know you already have.) Your occasional snarky bits hint at great things.