The world is full of "meh"

[yvannairie]

I managed to write a few hundred words on "Lovealikes" which put me in a writing mood, but then I had to do the laundry which put me off writing and gave me a headache and now I'm stuck firmly back in the pit of

"I am a failure of a writer"

"I will never amount to anything"

"I've vastly overestimated both my ability to spin a compelling yarn and my ability to string words together into compelling sentences"

and

"I should just stick to the kind of vacuous fannish babble I do best and leave the actual writing to the people around me who actually know how to do it"

Bleh.

I just wanna feel good about the things I doooooooooooo

I want to believe that people aren't just being nice for the sake of it when they tell me I'm good at writing.

And most of all I want to get the kind of writing done that doesn't make me cringe uncontrollably when reading it over, killing every shred of motivation I may have.

Comments

[corvidology]

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through. - Ira Glass.

♥

[cassini]

[i think i also needed this also. i don't have much else to add to the support pile for frustrated creatives besides a resounding... 'same'. i complained to my wife last night that my writing was 'boring me', but hell? if i hadn't done so much of it, i'd have less experience ]

[corvidology]

Of course our stories are more boring to us. We already know how they end. :D

[cassini]

[i appreciate your inference that i have, at one point, finished something =D ]

[corvidology]

I have killed many stories in my mind...

[cassini]

[my kd ratio of me versus my creativity is formidable. i stand defiant and short in a field of the fallen. the thing is, they respawn ]

[slightly more seriously, we did talk about how the pressure of wanting to get things right first try is hard to juggle at the best of times, and when the only way to improve upon your work is to read it ad nauseum and grapple with the fact that, yes, it does disappoint you, it's bloody miserable when undertaken solo. no wonder writers do end up flocking together for the emotional support even if they, like me, don't even end up sharing their work. that we're all going through it is comfort of a kind ]