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self-conscious about the WIP?
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I wouldn't call my novels kinky in the least, but I have a tendency to include extremely awkward sex scenes. Nothing graphic, just very awkward. Like if you saw it in a movie, you'd probably wince and maybe cover your eyes. For some reason I love evoking that feeling from readers, both in sex scenes and in lots of other situations. You know, the feeling you get when you've just said the absolute WRONGEST thing you could have? Yeah. Unfortunately, knowing other people are reading MY embarrassing scenarios makes ME embarrassed for my characters. It's quite excruciating.
So anyway I don't really have any advice that would solve your problem. But what helps for me is, I do not allow anyone (friends/family) to read my work unless we are separated for the duration of the reading. For example, if it's a short story, I might go and lock myself in another room while they read it. If it's a novel, obviously the separation has to be longer. So I will give a novel to my parents when I visit for Christmas... but only on the condition that they wait til I've gone home to read it. This helps me put it out of my mind entirely and pretend it never happened.
If your issue is with people online, I can't help you there. None of you are actually real, so it doesn't matter whether you read my work.
So anyway I don't really have any advice that would solve your problem. But what helps for me is, I do not allow anyone (friends/family) to read my work unless we are separated for the duration of the reading. For example, if it's a short story, I might go and lock myself in another room while they read it. If it's a novel, obviously the separation has to be longer. So I will give a novel to my parents when I visit for Christmas... but only on the condition that they wait til I've gone home to read it. This helps me put it out of my mind entirely and pretend it never happened.
If your issue is with people online, I can't help you there. None of you are actually real, so it doesn't matter whether you read my work.
Does this mean I don't have to pay taxes?If your issue is with people online, I can't help you there. None of you are actually real, so it doesn't matter whether you read my work.
My mother is proofreading my MS right now. (She is a crack proofreader). But yes, there are awkward sex scenes. While she's not objected to those, she has it in for my similes. Every last freakin' one of them.
And yes, it is killing me.
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Don't get me wrong, it's not the sex scenes. There are no explicit sex scenes. It's the nature of the relationships, and, well, the hinted-at sex scenes.
Good for you, Devil, for having such a great relationship with your mother. I would rather die.
Good for you, Devil, for having such a great relationship with your mother. I would rather die.
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- Writers who write for other writers should write letters.
- Never be embarrassed or ashamed about anything you choose to write. (Think of this before you send it to a market.)
- Stories to end all stories on a given topic, don't.
- It is a sin to waste the reader's time.
- If you've nothing to say, say it any way you like. Stylistic innovations, contorted story lines or none, exotic or genderless pronouns, internal inconsistencies, the recipe for preparing your lover as a cannibal banquet: feel free. If what you have to say is important and/or difficult to follow, use the simplest language possible. If the reader doesn't get it then, let it not be your fault.
- Everybody talks first draft.
Writing is having the courage to get naked in front of others--and it's got nothing to do with clothing!
Don't ever worry about what others think. They don't know you, or if they do, may never connect you with the words you wrote. (Or perhaps admit that they read and liked your stuff!)
If I worried about what people thought of my writing I'd never have picked up a pen!
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Trust me, if they are reading your sex scenes, they are going to be more embarrassed about enjoying them than you are about writing them.
I don't understand how people can judge other people based on the books that they write. Writing is a reflection of self, sure, but if your MC kills someone does that make you a killer?
If so, I'm a serial killer. Do I get like... a cool orange jumpsuit?
I don't understand how people can judge other people based on the books that they write. Writing is a reflection of self, sure, but if your MC kills someone does that make you a killer?
If so, I'm a serial killer. Do I get like... a cool orange jumpsuit?
it's a cinch people have read worse. and by 'worse' i mean that in every regard, from content to style (or lack thereof).
rick nelson said it best: you can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself.
besides, if i had a nickel for every time i've made an ass out of myself....
i know what you mean, though ~ it's like you're afraid of being judged for having deviant thoughts. more often than not, these people are just hypocrites with just as many skeletons in their closet as the next schmo, so they should judge the person in the mirror before anyone else. so the next time someone puts you down, remember that she's probably got pictures of herself naked floating around somewhere and he's probably been to several gay porn sites. she's probably checked out the wang on a doberman pincer and he's peeked into his daughter's room at night trying to catch a good view of her 14-year-old girlfriend's ass who's sleeping over. she probably drinks too much and fantasizes about the check-out boy and he does coke off a hooker's ass while on a business trip.
but, then again, who hasn't done these things? and these sons-a-bitches *dare* judge you on the content of your writing when their minds are so polluted? pfft.
rick nelson said it best: you can't please everyone, so you've got to please yourself.
besides, if i had a nickel for every time i've made an ass out of myself....
i know what you mean, though ~ it's like you're afraid of being judged for having deviant thoughts. more often than not, these people are just hypocrites with just as many skeletons in their closet as the next schmo, so they should judge the person in the mirror before anyone else. so the next time someone puts you down, remember that she's probably got pictures of herself naked floating around somewhere and he's probably been to several gay porn sites. she's probably checked out the wang on a doberman pincer and he's peeked into his daughter's room at night trying to catch a good view of her 14-year-old girlfriend's ass who's sleeping over. she probably drinks too much and fantasizes about the check-out boy and he does coke off a hooker's ass while on a business trip.
but, then again, who hasn't done these things? and these sons-a-bitches *dare* judge you on the content of your writing when their minds are so polluted? pfft.
I can honestly say....
I have never done coke off a hooker's ass.
But that's simply because such a brilliant idea had never occurred to me. I mean, cocaine and a hooker's ass go together like peanut butter and jelly. Why hadn't I thought of this combination sooner?
Gonna have to respectfully disagree with #2. I know I've hit my mark when I'm embarrassed about my story (er, not in a "wow this is so I'm bad I'm embarrassed" sense). If I'm not embarrassed, I haven't written with my whole heart and I haven't touched anything that matters deeply to me. I'm a private person. Writing is basically my way of exposing myself to the world. It's like getting up on a podium and telling a room of complete strangers how I feel about relationships, God, and my own insecurities. If I'm not embarrassed, I'm playing it safe and I'm not accomplishing anything I care about.
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Well I can't say I;ve done any of those things or fantazed about doing them!
There are some things I am too embarassed to write but they are not of a sexual nature or in anyway deviant. I long to write spiritual books on meditation and so on but I am very far from ready. I can't bear to open myself in that way and don't know if I ever will.
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I know exactly how you feel, especially since I have had people judge me on a couple of scenes (and not actually the ones I thought were the most outrageous to be honest). Luckily though I found someone who is pretty down to earth when it comes to that sort of thing, edgy content, and she gives me fair opinions without getting freaked out or thinking I'm a pervert or serial killer or anything like that.
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... While I am very happy with how it comes out, I can't help but feel very, very self-conscious when the stuff goes out to readers... It's worst when I am waiting for responses - usually I want to hide under a pillow, or scream, "look, I am not like this in real life! I am not! I swear! Honest!"
And it does not help that I write in 1st person. Multiple 1st person POVs.
If you ever experienced something like this, could you please tell me how you deal with this. Thanks.
I think you're experiencing a very typical angst. At least, I've heard and read the same sentiment from other horror writers, (Especially from those who write graphic violence. (Had the same concern, myself. Once.)
Readers are going to draw their own conclusions about the work and the writer. Some understand that fiction is just that. A storyteller took a topic and wrote a yarn.
Others will think you're writing an autobiography, complete with mutilated nuns in your freezer, and abused farm animals in your bedroom. Nothing you can say or do will convince those folks otherwise.
Perhaps participating in various on-line forums or hosting a website can help you combat an undesirable image. (gives you an opportunity to interact with others and present yourself as a "normal" person. Whatever the hell that is.) I don't know if this really works, but others have suggested it.
At the end of the day, you have two choices: Write the sort of material that doesn't foster wild speculation about your personal life. (Knowing that even then some people may choose to interpret your work as that of a closet weirdo.) Or grow a thick skin, write the story as you envision it, and trust that the majority of readers appreciate it for what it is; A fiction piece.
I favor the latter route.
(and since someone asked, no, there are no mutiliated nuns in my freezer, or farm animals, abused or otherwise, in my bedroom.)
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I find it disturbing that I had to double check that I DIDN'T write this post. Feels like exactly the sort of thing I might write (the coke off the hooker's ass was the tipping point).
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Larry meant not to be embarrassed in the sense of other people judging your subject matter and finding it wanting. One should aways ignore that sort of thing.
It used to be you didn't willingly admit to writing S.F. or mysteries. Those weren't "literary" y'see. It seems that erotica has taken their place!
There's a bit in a Dorothy L. Sayers Gaudy Night where her MC was judged harshly by her university peers for writing (gasp!) mysteries.
Miss Burrows: Excuse my saying so, Miss Vane, but given your own terrible experience, I wonder that you should still decide to write the sort of books you do.
Harriet Vane: You're saying that anyone with proper feelings would rather scrub floors for a living? Well, I should scrub floors very badly, and I write mysteries rather well.
I've had to defend my genres to the ignorant, but thankfully other writers *get* me.
They know that you don't always choose what to write, it chooses you.
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It used to be you didn't willingly admit to writing S.F. or mysteries. Those weren't "literary" y'see. It seems that erotica has taken their place!
There's a bit in a Dorothy L. Sayers Gaudy Night where her MC was judged harshly by her university peers for writing (gasp!) mysteries.
Trust me, there is no gasp! in this statement. It's true, it still holds for "lesser" genres (i.e. everything that is not literary or poetry).
Unless you are in the sciences, I guess, and then writing SF is not a problem.
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Rose, your relationships are beautiful and your "scenes" are done with so much subtlty and class, I can't see anyone objecting to them except for the very most uptight of people. Same with Jess, while not quite as subtle, they're done with dignity and written beautifully. I mean, comparatively speaking, I'm the sluttiest writer on the block!
Thanks, I enjoyed these (though six is a weird number--is there another he didn't tell us about?)
But I'm afraid I don't understand what the heck he means by Rule #6. Can you clarify?
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Yeah, that puzzles me, too. Perhaps it's to do with how eager one is to tell others about the Shiny New Thing that's captured one's imagination.
(Others may or may not share that eagerness. I am never eager to hear all about a WIP that ain't mine. I've earned the right to be a poopy-head about that.
)But when you've finished the first, and are on the second, going on fifth, draft in the quest to get it right, you're less eager to talk. It's ceased to be this Shiny New Thing and turned into Work I'm Gonna Finish Even If It Kills Me.
Welcome to my life.
I don't talk about WIPs, although I do sometimes make a sighing sound.
As to to other people's WIPs--nope, I'm never eager to hear about them. I'll listen politely, but it's like having people tell you their dreams.
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I took that one (everyone talks first drafts) to refer to all the people who start writing and never really finish. You know, those people who, when they learn you're a "Writer," suddenly let on that THEY'VE been writing this novel, too, and it's going to be so wonderful because of A, B, and C. And all the while you're standing there thinking, "They'll never get past page 10."
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Well...when my father read LOTTERY and commented on how many F***s there were...that added a new dimension I hadn't considered. LOL
This is why my manuscript is staying as far, far, far away as I can keep it from my MIL for as long as humanly possible.
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