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Bear with me, dear blogosphere.
Dec. 17th, 2008 09:10 amI have my suspicions that this blog has become spectacularly boring as of late. I wish I could think of something to spice it up, but right now, what I'm doing isn't all that fascinating. I'm doing final revisions. As spectator sports go, it's not one. I'm correcting a lot of grammar and spelling errors as well as nipping and tucking bits that need nipping and tucking.
It's like the plastic surgery of writing, really. Nothing major and reconstructive like my last rewrite, but the chin needs lifting and boy does that tummy need a tuck.
But I digress. I'm sorry for the boringness as of late. I hope things will get interesting soon enough.
I wish I was one of those people who make their writing process really fascinating and deep and meaningful to other people. Seems like there are plenty of other blogging writers who manage it. But, then again, a lot of those are published and well known writers, and I suppose knowing how bestselling books are written is interesting to most.
I guess maybe readers go to writing blogs looking for advice, for rules, maybe. It can't be because they find the minutiae of putting together words on paper so utterly fascinating. Even I don't always find reading about writing that interesting. Sometimes I bore myself if I think too long about what I do when I write. Sad, but true.
BTW, as far as rules go, if you haven't heard the word, the word is that success is the only rule. I'm kind of surprised at the number of people who commented that they needed to be told success was the only rule, or that they felt guilt over not writing according all the clever little bits of advice people like to hand out like fruitcakes at an office Christmas party.
Pithy advice seems to be like fruitcakes anyway. Often regifted, rarely partaken of.
Me? I didn't need to be told this, though it's nice to see others feeling freed up in their writing. I'm all for creative freedom, inward and outward.
But, gee, I never thought I'd be grateful for unapologetically lazy and procrastinating nature, but I am now. I don't write according to the rules, and I could care less if I do. I never did get too caught up in the need to write in accordance with the company line.
That may be because:
a) I'm ornery by nature and the rules sort of made me tired
b) I didn't have a lot of access to "How To" books or writing groups until I was in college
c) I tend to assume that if you're just that good at what you do, you can get away with anything
d) all of the above were reinforced by my experiences in school.
Thing about school was that even though I'm actually not that smart (I'm actually probably only average intelligence), I was good at it. I was good because I had an almost pathological need to please authority figures and could get pretty decent grades without breaking a sweat.
Other kids had to study before tests. I stopped even remembering when we had tests, because it didn't matter to me. I didn't need to study, especially if it was history or English (my best subjects), where all I needed to do was scribble some notes, look over them twenty minutes before class began, and collect my A+ a few days later. (Math was another story, though, because I could study all damn day and never understand it. I still don't, to this day.)
So I learned early on that even though the teachers would tell you how to study, if you made an A, they couldn't say crap to you about your study habits because you were getting the job done.
As naive as it sounds, I sort of applied the same thing to writing. If you're good at it, who cares how you got it done? Who cares if it took you three years or three weeks?
When you submit it to an agent/editor, they don't know how long it took you to write it. They don't know if you sat down very neatly every single day and wrote for an allotted time. Hell, you could write it standing on your head while trying to recite the elements on the periodic table. Nobody's gonna know but you how you got it done (unless you tell people, of course).
The people who decide what happens to your manuscript once it leaves your hands (agents, editors, readers, critics) only know that there's a story in front of them and whether it sucks or not.
It's just like those stupid little science projects that the teacher gave you two weeks to do, but you always ended up doing the night before. It doesn't matter if you did it two weeks ago or the night before. So long as you show up with your paper mache model of the solar system, it's all good.
In case hearing it from a far wiser source than me didn't drive it home - guilt means nothing and it just slows you down and makes things harder than they have to be. After all, getting to be a master in any field, creative or otherwise, is basically the art of learning to keep your own counsel when it matters.
In conclusion: Guilt sucks. Write like you wanna. And I'll try very hard to be more interesting in the future.
It's like the plastic surgery of writing, really. Nothing major and reconstructive like my last rewrite, but the chin needs lifting and boy does that tummy need a tuck.
But I digress. I'm sorry for the boringness as of late. I hope things will get interesting soon enough.
I wish I was one of those people who make their writing process really fascinating and deep and meaningful to other people. Seems like there are plenty of other blogging writers who manage it. But, then again, a lot of those are published and well known writers, and I suppose knowing how bestselling books are written is interesting to most.
I guess maybe readers go to writing blogs looking for advice, for rules, maybe. It can't be because they find the minutiae of putting together words on paper so utterly fascinating. Even I don't always find reading about writing that interesting. Sometimes I bore myself if I think too long about what I do when I write. Sad, but true.
BTW, as far as rules go, if you haven't heard the word, the word is that success is the only rule. I'm kind of surprised at the number of people who commented that they needed to be told success was the only rule, or that they felt guilt over not writing according all the clever little bits of advice people like to hand out like fruitcakes at an office Christmas party.
Pithy advice seems to be like fruitcakes anyway. Often regifted, rarely partaken of.
Me? I didn't need to be told this, though it's nice to see others feeling freed up in their writing. I'm all for creative freedom, inward and outward.
But, gee, I never thought I'd be grateful for unapologetically lazy and procrastinating nature, but I am now. I don't write according to the rules, and I could care less if I do. I never did get too caught up in the need to write in accordance with the company line.
That may be because:
a) I'm ornery by nature and the rules sort of made me tired
b) I didn't have a lot of access to "How To" books or writing groups until I was in college
c) I tend to assume that if you're just that good at what you do, you can get away with anything
d) all of the above were reinforced by my experiences in school.
Thing about school was that even though I'm actually not that smart (I'm actually probably only average intelligence), I was good at it. I was good because I had an almost pathological need to please authority figures and could get pretty decent grades without breaking a sweat.
Other kids had to study before tests. I stopped even remembering when we had tests, because it didn't matter to me. I didn't need to study, especially if it was history or English (my best subjects), where all I needed to do was scribble some notes, look over them twenty minutes before class began, and collect my A+ a few days later. (Math was another story, though, because I could study all damn day and never understand it. I still don't, to this day.)
So I learned early on that even though the teachers would tell you how to study, if you made an A, they couldn't say crap to you about your study habits because you were getting the job done.
As naive as it sounds, I sort of applied the same thing to writing. If you're good at it, who cares how you got it done? Who cares if it took you three years or three weeks?
When you submit it to an agent/editor, they don't know how long it took you to write it. They don't know if you sat down very neatly every single day and wrote for an allotted time. Hell, you could write it standing on your head while trying to recite the elements on the periodic table. Nobody's gonna know but you how you got it done (unless you tell people, of course).
The people who decide what happens to your manuscript once it leaves your hands (agents, editors, readers, critics) only know that there's a story in front of them and whether it sucks or not.
It's just like those stupid little science projects that the teacher gave you two weeks to do, but you always ended up doing the night before. It doesn't matter if you did it two weeks ago or the night before. So long as you show up with your paper mache model of the solar system, it's all good.
In case hearing it from a far wiser source than me didn't drive it home - guilt means nothing and it just slows you down and makes things harder than they have to be. After all, getting to be a master in any field, creative or otherwise, is basically the art of learning to keep your own counsel when it matters.
In conclusion: Guilt sucks. Write like you wanna. And I'll try very hard to be more interesting in the future.
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