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.

♥