Beating the Block
I'm starting to think that you just can't listen to reasons why you're not a famous writer. I'm serious about this. There's always like five of them.
My current reasons are:
I'm getting too old: most writers who are famous were famous by the time they were 28.
I've been working on this thing for too long: This is a huge one. At some point in the writing project, if it goes on for a long time, it can feel like you're dragging around a dead horse everywhere you go.
I would feel better if I didn't have this thing nagging at me all the time: This one's totally true. Whenever I have a moment of free time, I have an unfinished novel to make me feel guilty.
No one likes my work: Well...no one's seen my work.
Publishing's hard: Sure is, but people do it all the time.
I have been working on my unfinished novel, "Shock Tea" since the year 2000. It is huge. I'm thinking of cutting out 100 pages of it. That's the kind of editing I'm up against.
The thing is here that when you think of yourself as a writer, it is always based off of what you've written, and by what you've written, I really mean: what you've finished writing. While working on my gigantic novel, I haven't written anything else except for papers and blogs. This means, by my own definition of writer, that I'm now either an academic writer or a blogger. You could say I'm a novelist, but that's not finished, so it's like it doesn't exist as far as personal definition is concerned. I haven't written a short story since I impressed my wife to be with the last one. That means that since I began dating my wife, I haven't written a short story.
Short stories are good. You finish them and you're a writer. You can't publish them for shit though, so if you write short stories, you can not be a "successful" writer, and if you can't be a successful writer (so the little voice in my head tells me), there's no point to writing at all. See how all of this works out to keep you from writing crap?
See, I realized this a long time ago and decided that if I ever wanted to be taken seriously as a writer, I'd better write a novel. Plus, I like novels. Like the novel I'm writing right now...which is killing me.
Here's what I've decided: I need to write that novel. Of course, I also need to write a dissertation and have two articles published by the time I go on the job market in December. Also, I have to watch a 2 year old, sell some stuff on eBay, teach about 3 classes a semester, and read a novel a week (which I have been completely lagging on).
Look, my point is that being a writer is harder than anything else in the universe. True. The reason that all the great writers did it at the age of 22 is because they didn't have fuck all to do at that age except sit down and write about their angst. The rest of us have to write and live a whole big full time life. We kill ourselves for our failures, but really, failure is a huge part of the system. We should expect it. We should relish it as any other piece of what we're doing. When we think of it as something that is an indicator of our incapacity as writers, we are dooming ourselves. Having to fight against odds is really what being a writer is all about.
...and when we start thinking of ourselves as other than writers, there the problems multiply, the failures snowball. We have great ideas, but we lose sight of any reason to write them down. We think up stories, but when we have the time to write them, we choose something else to do instead. We are nudged by the writing process, but when we stop believing ourselves to be writers, we begin to resist that nudge. We pretend that the ideas weren't that good, the story not that entertaining, we believe our insights to be banal, and pretend that other judgments we have made about ourselves in the past were deluded. This is not good.
My current reasons are:
I'm getting too old: most writers who are famous were famous by the time they were 28.
I've been working on this thing for too long: This is a huge one. At some point in the writing project, if it goes on for a long time, it can feel like you're dragging around a dead horse everywhere you go.
I would feel better if I didn't have this thing nagging at me all the time: This one's totally true. Whenever I have a moment of free time, I have an unfinished novel to make me feel guilty.
No one likes my work: Well...no one's seen my work.
Publishing's hard: Sure is, but people do it all the time.
I have been working on my unfinished novel, "Shock Tea" since the year 2000. It is huge. I'm thinking of cutting out 100 pages of it. That's the kind of editing I'm up against.
The thing is here that when you think of yourself as a writer, it is always based off of what you've written, and by what you've written, I really mean: what you've finished writing. While working on my gigantic novel, I haven't written anything else except for papers and blogs. This means, by my own definition of writer, that I'm now either an academic writer or a blogger. You could say I'm a novelist, but that's not finished, so it's like it doesn't exist as far as personal definition is concerned. I haven't written a short story since I impressed my wife to be with the last one. That means that since I began dating my wife, I haven't written a short story.
Short stories are good. You finish them and you're a writer. You can't publish them for shit though, so if you write short stories, you can not be a "successful" writer, and if you can't be a successful writer (so the little voice in my head tells me), there's no point to writing at all. See how all of this works out to keep you from writing crap?
See, I realized this a long time ago and decided that if I ever wanted to be taken seriously as a writer, I'd better write a novel. Plus, I like novels. Like the novel I'm writing right now...which is killing me.
Here's what I've decided: I need to write that novel. Of course, I also need to write a dissertation and have two articles published by the time I go on the job market in December. Also, I have to watch a 2 year old, sell some stuff on eBay, teach about 3 classes a semester, and read a novel a week (which I have been completely lagging on).
Look, my point is that being a writer is harder than anything else in the universe. True. The reason that all the great writers did it at the age of 22 is because they didn't have fuck all to do at that age except sit down and write about their angst. The rest of us have to write and live a whole big full time life. We kill ourselves for our failures, but really, failure is a huge part of the system. We should expect it. We should relish it as any other piece of what we're doing. When we think of it as something that is an indicator of our incapacity as writers, we are dooming ourselves. Having to fight against odds is really what being a writer is all about.
...and when we start thinking of ourselves as other than writers, there the problems multiply, the failures snowball. We have great ideas, but we lose sight of any reason to write them down. We think up stories, but when we have the time to write them, we choose something else to do instead. We are nudged by the writing process, but when we stop believing ourselves to be writers, we begin to resist that nudge. We pretend that the ideas weren't that good, the story not that entertaining, we believe our insights to be banal, and pretend that other judgments we have made about ourselves in the past were deluded. This is not good.
Labels: writing
posted by Monstro D. Whale | 8:09 AM
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5 Comments
