Christ on a bike; I get some sleep and this happens!
Um...I'm not one to go overboard emotionally. Just never been a gushy person, but...well you guys...you kinda don't suck as bad as I thought you did.
*cough*
My brain-demons say you were. Churchill called them black dogs.
Me? I have...grey hamsters.
However, you may recall just a week ago when I sent you a few chapters which I thought were such complete and utter tripe that I was seriously considering dumping the entire book into the Wangstbasket, never to see the light of day again. Been there. I feel your pain.
That's something I'll never understand. How the writer can despise their own brain-vomit and the reader raves over it. Goes both ways with us but for people who are supposed to be people-watchers and truthfully represent folks on the page...we have such vastly differing views of reality that we can't both be right.
It's a mystery to me how this can happen.
Let's just blame it on low self-esteem and bipolar disorder.
I've been accused of being manic depressive, though never "officially". Maybe it's just a writer thing, as you said. God knows I get some serious lows and some wickedly cool highs.
thethinker42, you stand accused of being a mentally ill pervert. How do you plead?
Your mother can [censored] my [censored] with a [censored][censored] on a [censored] with a blue [censored].
She'd probably enjoy it, but thanks for the offer. Try a splintery baseball bat next time.
No, you're not bad. I can say this with absolute authority and have over 445 documented reasons to back me up.
Oh yeah.
*reads*
The only way out is through.
I hate it when you quote me back at myself.
...Don't think, just do.
A ton of us are rooting for you. Go forth bravely.
I hate my own lack of ability to take my own advice sometimes. I know what you say is true.
I believe it when I say it to other people, but...
Argh. I hate the word 'but'. It means 'ignore everything I just said, I'm gonna tell you something different and possibly hypocritical'.
And now for Fizzy's posts. I knew he'd appear here and was looking forward to reading what he said.
when one really cranks out the words with great ease and then in another writing session finds them difficult (giving rise to a significant count difference), there is a tendency to emotionally blur the quantity thing over into quality.
I think that's exactly what I've been doing.
Many's the time where I've said I'm a feast-or-famine writer and I spend a lot of time wondering what consistency would feel like.
And the resulting impatience can poison the words that are written in the latter hour so the writer hates them.
How true.
Nails everywhere better watch out; Fizzy keeps hitting them on the head.
In each writing session, a writer should move the story along.
Something to remember.
I've deleted the word count meter from my blog and my signature here and I'm
slowly trying to wean myself off this madness of aiming for so many thousand words for a book.
Daily targets, though, I think are good. They give me something to shoot for. If I was aimless or not bothered about writing so many pages a day, I doubt I'd get anything done.
Perhaps a schedule would be better than a set number? A
time to write rather than a target?
Measure yourself against the story.
I liked this part.
You have said to other posters, numerous times, that writing is hard work. Now, you are complaining when you have a hard writing session?
That's why I feel like a hypocrite.
However, in my defence I should say this isn't so much a writing problem as a mental problem.
If I was a hairdresser or a bricklayer or a butcher, baker or candlestickmaker I'd feel the same. Writers just have more opportunity to angst publicly I guess.
I say this after a few hours' sleep (thank God)! I've come to realise I was focusing on my writing when it was (is) my own head that's not working properly.
Give the 800 words the benefit of a sleep-over. Come back to them with fresh eyes and see if they are that horrible (without bringing quantity into the equation). Did you more the story along?
Exactly what I'm going to investigate once I'm done posting here.
I don't know if it's common to all writers, but for both our sakes, lets just assume it's common to writers of a particular genius. A dazzling, but inconstant brilliance, hm?
Yes. Yes, I shall choose to believe this.
I'm about to do something I'm horrible at, and probably will regret, somewhere down the road. But here goes:
You are about the smartest and most succinctly expressive poster I know in this place. I can't imagine you're doing anything other than applying those qualities to your fiction. I think you're incapable of writing crap.
*cough*
You know, blaccy, sometimes you're...well, not sucky.
Which means, you are at the tipping point where you need to send something out. Only then will you know.
That's the scary thing. The
frightening thing. I've said to so many people, "The only way to get over your fears is to face them.
Time for me to do exactly that.
It's not angsting about the fact that it really is hard work...it's the fear that you're putting in all that hard work for nothing.
I think you have something here.
I wish I knew. Sadly, I don't have crystal balls.
(Shut up seun).
Also, if I know you as well as I think I do, you've probably got some finishing anxiety going on because you're getting close to the end of your current book. Need I remind you that you went through this with the last one, too?
Um, really? Never!
*cough*
*moves swiftly on*
Have you considered drugs?
Hmm. *strokes chinbeard*
I often hate what I write. We all wallow sometimes - and it's that that spurs us on to improve isn't it? And then I go back and look at something old, like I did last night, and think 'Hang on, I wrote that? Hey I can work with this! It doesn't completely suck!'
Ig you thought your every word was gold, you'd never learn anything new. So it's a good wallow.
Chillax girl. Get some sleep, go to the park and watch the
fit blokesducks. Enjoy the sun. Then come back and attack that keyboard
I live in Dundee. There
are no fit blokes.
And you stole my 'My work sucks like giant hairy donkey balls' line. Moobag. *pokes tongue out at SP*
My donkey balls are cheesy. Yours are hairy.
I say it's okay to feel miserable or upset. It's not okay to leave the wheat you tended rotting in the fields. Reap, Scarlet, reap.
I used to dabble with words. I write now. I figure the least I can do is give a little heart-felt "rah-rah" to the people that set the example for me, i.e., you freaks.
I'm hopeless at shit like this. Or at least, I feel nervous when saying thank you, for some weird reason.
But thank you.
I think it was Freud that said all writers are mad. I've come to the conclusion that he had a point. Writers seem far more susceptible to mood swings, mental disorders, emotional problems, and other such things, than 'normal' people.
Aye. For the record, diagnosed as manic depressive in my early twenties and I've been clear for a while now. At the start of my 'good' period I got nervous that it would rear its ugly head again.
Then I started to feel safe.
And now...
But I think IdiotsRUs has summed it up quite succinctly with her story of being unable to write on medication. If being 'cured' means not being able to write any more, this is an option that most of us just wouldn't contemplate.
Did you ever see Saint Stephen Fry's programme about manic depression?
The Secret Life of a Manic-Depressive I think it was called. Anyway, he asked the people he interviewed if there was a magic button to make it go away, would they press it?
All but one said no.
One man even said, "You're haunted by demons, but sometimes you fly with the angels and that makes it all worth it."
Pull yourself out of it, bird. Or I'll give you such a tongue-lashing you won't know what's hit you.
Dirty bastard.
And I doubt the mods will spank me for saying that, because...well, you are.
Sorry to all, but I have to jump in again. And I do it with an initial apology in case anyone misinterprets the intent.
For the record, Fizzy and I have exchanged rep points and PMs over the years in which I've given him permission to speak to me the way he does, because it's exactly what I need.
Excuses let us become victims, and victimology is hard to get out of because it* (a) makes us feel good about ourselves, (b) demands respect, by-passing the appropriate route of earning it, and (c) it relieves us of any responsibility for our own fouled-up condition.
I completely, 100% agree.
When we hit a rut like Scarlet has articulated, it's real. It happens. Writing is hard and it has rough spots. But we have to accept those rough spots as part of the journey, and above all avoid using them as excuses to bail, to give up, to take up the role of victim to this creative endeavor. Excuses to avoid finishing, to avoid putting our work out there for evaluation (in case we aren't as good as we hope) make us victims.
See? See? I told you he was good.
Some may be upset by this post, but Scarlet knows I love her and I will do anything I can to make sure she gains the success she is working so hard too achieve.
Precisely. I much prefer straight-to-the-point posts than arselickery (unless it comes from tt42 because it's cool to see her humbled in public).
Scarlet, look in the mirror. Are you making excuses? Don't become a victim.
Honestly? No.
If I
wallowed, yes I would be making excuses. Everyone feels bad at times, I know. But judging how I lived my life, say, ten years ago? Getting in a rut and digging myself deeper and thinking myself into a depression is a very real danger.
And
then I would make myself a victim, a possibility that makes me shudder.
Based on some comments from you in another post Scarlet, I wonder if your just suffering from various stages of fear-of-rejection anxiety. You had mentioned elsewhere that you are putting off some editing because of that.
Very, very likely.
I have no idea where you are at in and among your various writing projects, but as it regards my own work I put up an enormous wall between the "writing my book" process and the "trying to get the damn thing published" process.
I believe that's what I'm doing.
I have a nearly-150k draft waiting to be edited. I'm 98k into this WIP (incidentally, I only started it on 18th April this year, boast boast
).
And I'm planning another novel.
So yeah, all wonderful ways to delay editing that first one.
Scarlet, no matter how much time we spend wallowing, the eventual highs are worth it. Writing is itself a sort of drug; the crash and jitters are to be expected, but it’s a fair trade for the highs.
Like the angels/demons thing all over again...
HUGZZZ.
SP, if you need a fresh set of eyes on your work, you can email me. Lori can hook you up with my address. I know having a totally new perspective look at my work always gets me fired up again, whether they love it or hate it. If they love it, I know I'm not a total failfest. If they hate it, it usually pisses me off and makes me turn it up to 11 so as to prove 'em wrong.
Ah, but you and Lori are just being
nice to me. You don't understand. I really
am awful...
/whinge off.
Once again, thanks to each and every one of you. Even the ones I didn't quote.
Honestly, this is why I love this site.
Don't tell Mac. She'll think I've gone soft.