(no subject)
Oct. 21st, 2004 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stakebaitSo as a writer I have a serious problem. I don't write. More specifically, I don't finish. Not including fanfic, class assignments, co-writing, the non-fiction I do for work or by request, porn, or poems and other stuff short enough to finish in the first initial burst of enthusiasm, I've finished a grand total of three short stories and a children's manuscript.
I've deleted all the stuff about what I thought the problem was but turned out not to be because really, you don't care. I don't even care, and it's my problem. Suffice it to say it's not writer's block in the usual sense. it's not lack of time, it's not lack of ability to structure a story, or to wing one, or even fear that people will think that it's no good. I may have those things too, but that's not It right now.
I was reading The Forest For the Trees, An Editor's Advice to Writers, by Betsy Lerner. It's a good book because it's not how to write, it's how to handle everything else about being a writer, including why people who want to write don't. There's a line in there that says "are you waiting for your parents to die?" I teared up, put the book down, and didn't pick it up again for weeks.
So that was a clue.
Clue two was talking to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dotsomething, and realizing that I'm not afraid of my writing being judged, I'm afraid of being judged for writing -- as if that were inherently presumptuous, regardless of the quality of the result. I'm not half as afraid that no one will notice as I am that someone might.
Clue three was that, what with turning 30, I started putting the pressure on myself to change this. You can't coast on your potential forever, Mer, I says to myself. So I decided to write a couple stories to anthology specifications and send them off. And lo and behold, it was easy. Not effortless, of course. But no harder than fanfic. Huh, says I. What do all these things have in common?
Somebody else asked for them. Explicitly, as with homework, regular work, Iron Author, ficathons, or anthologies: write this now. Or implicitly, 'cause there's a pre-existing demand for Buffy fanfic from people who like Buffy. Ditto porn.
Apparently in my brain, it's okay to write something if I'm fulfilling someone else's needs by doing so. But it's not okay to just write and assume (or even hope) that an audience will come.
I always knew I wasn't one of the "I write for myself" people -- I respect that, but I never got it emotionally. I have to have an audience, at least in my head, or why I am bothering to write it down at all? I already know what happens. But I didn't know this piece, about how it has to be something the audience already wants. It doesn't have to be a big audience. One person is plenty. They don't have to send feedback. It's not about getting a response. It's about whether I'm entitled to write, and in my head the answer is, only if it's for somebody else. Hell, I've been thinking about this for a couple of months now, but I'm only writing it out now becausemsagara said she wanted to read it.
So if it's not for someone else, I start out in a great burst of enthusiasm because I have the coolest idea... and as soon as it wears off it's supplanted by dread, and I never even open the file again.
Fucked up, no? It's not like we're rationing the alphabet. And this is where it gets all therapy speak, because now that I know this, I know exactly where it comes from. My father is a narcissist, I grew up believing that it was my job to take care of other people and not okay for me to have wants and needs. Even just the fact of having a point of view of my own was an offense, though one I never did figure out how to avoid.
I've been through this before. I've talked before (in a locked post, if you missed it that's why) about how I think this influenced my submissive sexuality. I don't particularly want to go there now. I know I've dealt with this re: not letting myself get drained by other people's crises. This is not a new dynamic for me. So how the HELL did I miss that it was what's been damming (I wrote damning first, it seems equally appropriate) up the writing all these years?
The one story I finished that WASN'T to anthology specs? Was a time travel piece about a guy who feels guilty all the time, lacks a single point of view of his own, and the story plays with changing point of view right in it. And that was over a year ago. Did I know what it was about? Of course not. But in retrospect it's so obvious I could cry. I hereby renounce any claim to being remotely intelligent.
So now what? Okay, I slog and slog and slog in therapy and give up my hopes that perhaps we were finally nearing the end. Got that piece, and lord knows I've had practice. But if at all possible I'd really like not to wait until I achieve sanity before I get anything on paper. If only because at that point I'll have so many story ideas it'll take me forever to dig out of the hole.
I discovered, thanks tobuffybot, that if a particular person asks me to finish something because they want to read it, that's enough, at least for a short piece. (That's how I got The Middle Prince finished.) But only if they specifically want to read that specific story. A general desire for me to accomplish stuff? Deeply appreciated, but for justification purposes, useless. I suspect I can scare up enough people who really want to read Broken Glass Slippers to make the experiment as to whether this is enough to get me through a novel draft. But even if it is, it seems like a heavy burden to impose on my friends.
Help me out here, anyone? How do you get to a place where you can tell a story without knowing someone's listening?
I've deleted all the stuff about what I thought the problem was but turned out not to be because really, you don't care. I don't even care, and it's my problem. Suffice it to say it's not writer's block in the usual sense. it's not lack of time, it's not lack of ability to structure a story, or to wing one, or even fear that people will think that it's no good. I may have those things too, but that's not It right now.
I was reading The Forest For the Trees, An Editor's Advice to Writers, by Betsy Lerner. It's a good book because it's not how to write, it's how to handle everything else about being a writer, including why people who want to write don't. There's a line in there that says "are you waiting for your parents to die?" I teared up, put the book down, and didn't pick it up again for weeks.
So that was a clue.
Clue two was talking to
dotsomething, and realizing that I'm not afraid of my writing being judged, I'm afraid of being judged for writing -- as if that were inherently presumptuous, regardless of the quality of the result. I'm not half as afraid that no one will notice as I am that someone might.Clue three was that, what with turning 30, I started putting the pressure on myself to change this. You can't coast on your potential forever, Mer, I says to myself. So I decided to write a couple stories to anthology specifications and send them off. And lo and behold, it was easy. Not effortless, of course. But no harder than fanfic. Huh, says I. What do all these things have in common?
Somebody else asked for them. Explicitly, as with homework, regular work, Iron Author, ficathons, or anthologies: write this now. Or implicitly, 'cause there's a pre-existing demand for Buffy fanfic from people who like Buffy. Ditto porn.
Apparently in my brain, it's okay to write something if I'm fulfilling someone else's needs by doing so. But it's not okay to just write and assume (or even hope) that an audience will come.
I always knew I wasn't one of the "I write for myself" people -- I respect that, but I never got it emotionally. I have to have an audience, at least in my head, or why I am bothering to write it down at all? I already know what happens. But I didn't know this piece, about how it has to be something the audience already wants. It doesn't have to be a big audience. One person is plenty. They don't have to send feedback. It's not about getting a response. It's about whether I'm entitled to write, and in my head the answer is, only if it's for somebody else. Hell, I've been thinking about this for a couple of months now, but I'm only writing it out now because
msagara said she wanted to read it.So if it's not for someone else, I start out in a great burst of enthusiasm because I have the coolest idea... and as soon as it wears off it's supplanted by dread, and I never even open the file again.
Fucked up, no? It's not like we're rationing the alphabet. And this is where it gets all therapy speak, because now that I know this, I know exactly where it comes from. My father is a narcissist, I grew up believing that it was my job to take care of other people and not okay for me to have wants and needs. Even just the fact of having a point of view of my own was an offense, though one I never did figure out how to avoid.
I've been through this before. I've talked before (in a locked post, if you missed it that's why) about how I think this influenced my submissive sexuality. I don't particularly want to go there now. I know I've dealt with this re: not letting myself get drained by other people's crises. This is not a new dynamic for me. So how the HELL did I miss that it was what's been damming (I wrote damning first, it seems equally appropriate) up the writing all these years?
The one story I finished that WASN'T to anthology specs? Was a time travel piece about a guy who feels guilty all the time, lacks a single point of view of his own, and the story plays with changing point of view right in it. And that was over a year ago. Did I know what it was about? Of course not. But in retrospect it's so obvious I could cry. I hereby renounce any claim to being remotely intelligent.
So now what? Okay, I slog and slog and slog in therapy and give up my hopes that perhaps we were finally nearing the end. Got that piece, and lord knows I've had practice. But if at all possible I'd really like not to wait until I achieve sanity before I get anything on paper. If only because at that point I'll have so many story ideas it'll take me forever to dig out of the hole.
I discovered, thanks to
buffybot, that if a particular person asks me to finish something because they want to read it, that's enough, at least for a short piece. (That's how I got The Middle Prince finished.) But only if they specifically want to read that specific story. A general desire for me to accomplish stuff? Deeply appreciated, but for justification purposes, useless. I suspect I can scare up enough people who really want to read Broken Glass Slippers to make the experiment as to whether this is enough to get me through a novel draft. But even if it is, it seems like a heavy burden to impose on my friends.Help me out here, anyone? How do you get to a place where you can tell a story without knowing someone's listening?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 04:20 pm (UTC)I think the latter is structurally his best work, but I like everything enough to recommend it.
This could take a while. *grin*
It's funny, because I adored Le guin's SF for the longest time, but couldn't really penetrate the Earthsea books, go figure. When I finally did, it was, oddly enough, because of Tehanu, which is considered by most to be the least favoured; I then went back and read the others again. But -- reading those lead to Tales of Earthsea which was a wonderful collection, and reading that lead to The Other Wind which is stunning. It was fabulous. And it was so much a return to an earlier heart and place -- I can't quite describe it.
Orson Scott Card, despite his politics, especially Speaker for the Dead
That was his best novel, imho.
I love almost everyone on your second list; I don't read much in the way of mysteries, and while I did read two James novels, I neither loved nor hated them (in in-laws eat them, I swear).
I liked the first four of Tanya Huff's Blood this, Blood that books quite a lot.
She calls them them the "Blood Noun" books, if that helps <g>.
So how about you? *grin*
All of the above until you reach the Heyers (which I also tried; I failed to penetrate them) and the Austen (which regularly causes all my writer friends to hit me with things, except maybe
I also like Robin McKinley (pretty much anything). I love all of Pratchett after Men at Arms with the notable exception of Last Continent, which was a Rincewind novel (I don't hate them, but I don't love them). C. S. Friedman, anything, but I have yet to read the new book The Wilding. Tad Williams' Otherland. Stephenson's Cryptonomicon; I have just acquired the last of his Baroque trilogy and will read them soon (I was thinking of taking them to WFC for the plane ride); Susan Palwick's Flying In Place which is being reprinted sometime next year. Steven Brust's novels, but less so the Dumas Pastiche than the Vlad novels. Gene Wolfe. Sean Stewart, almost anything. Tanya Huff, ditto. Patricia McKillip, whose Forgotten beasts of Eld was one of my earliest fantasy reads.
My comfort reading at the moment is split between the Pratchetts (all of the Watch books, and many of the singletons, and also the Tiffany books -- I had a two week nothing-but-Pratchett stint recently) and Eva Ibbotson's adult novels, although I will reread Harpist in The Wind purely for comfort, often without referring to the previous two volumes.
Oh, and Steve Erikson's Malazan novels are really good and really grim epic/war fantasy. Karin Lowachee, especially Warchild, which, oddly enough, is not a comfort read, but I can reread the last half of the book over and over again almost compulsively.
I'll stop for now <g>.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-27 05:56 pm (UTC)I liked Tehanu a lot, but then I'm strange. It did feel very different from the first three books in a lot of ways. But it felt different in that neat "this is how the same text looks from another angle" way, which is part of what I like about retellings, and usually takes another writer to pull off.
Though I was more ambivilent about the same sort of jump from Swordspoint to Fall of the Kings. I think it has something to do with *why* you loved the first book(s), and how much of that remains.
I keep forgetting if I own/have read The Other Wind or not, so I'm afraid to buy it twice. But with a glowing review like that, maybe I should chance it.
Orson Scott Card, despite his politics, especially Speaker for the Dead
That was his best novel, imho.
*nods* I have a weakness for Songmaster, but it's not nearly as complex/strong/innovative. And I love Ender's Game, but I love what SftD builds on that foundation more.
I don't read much in the way of mysteries, and while I did read two James novels, I neither loved nor hated them (in in-laws eat them, I swear).
PD James? Children of Men is her one SF novel, that most people don't know about and is shelved in mystery half the time. I love it, but it's got that England in the Autumn of Empire feel to it that not everyone cares for.
I liked McKinley's Sunshine a lot, but had bounced off a previous fairy tale retelling that came heavily recommended, though I generally like them. Ditto McKillip -- I read Eld and one or two others, can see the skill and why my friends would think I'd be into it, but it has never quite meshed yet.
I've never read any C. S. Friedman, and I tried Tad Williams, but he is Not My Thing. I like practically all Stephenson EXCEPT Cryptomicon, with special mention of Snow Crash and Diamond Age. I'm embarassed to admit I tried Gene Wolfe and wasn't up to the job. I keep reading the Sean Stewarts although there's something subtly askew in them, or in me, which keeps us from totally synching with each other. I don't buy the Brusts but I have fun borrowing a batch and binging through them every couple of years.
I've never even heard of Susan Palwick, Eva Ibbotson, Steve Erikson, or Karin Lowachee -- which should I start with?