And miles to go
August 12, 2011 11:12 PM
I've been in a place of stasis lately. Two months ago I thought my life would be going in one direction, and two weeks ago I started realizing that it's not. A few hours ago I snipped off the final threads connecting me to that other future self, and despite having no real guarantees that my new direction will get me anywhere golden, I'm feeling strangely unafraid.
One day I'll probably fall hard enough to seriously reconsider my bridge-burning policy, but that day is not today.
Since Clarion West, I've been doing a lot of revising, both of stories that I wrote during my six weeks in Seattle and of older projects, and I realized something. While at CW, I tried for the most part to venture into unknown territories, writing worlds and characters and situations that I'd never considered before. It was fun, and I came up with a lot of material that I rather like, but it was missing something. And it was like I'd forgotten why I write.
Someone told me once, You're not a god. You're just a biographer.
I write because I'm madly in love with people inside my head and want everyone else to fall in love with them, too. It's selfish and unreasoning and probably fits someone's definition of insane, but there it is.
It's the obsession that makes a palpable difference, those hours and days and weeks I spend sharing my headspace with other voices, relinquishing whatever sense of self I have left, seeing my world only through the filter of the work.
It's what makes everything else feel like little more than a writing exercise.
It's also what has left me wracked with crippling self-doubt. These are the important stories, the ones that matter, and I'm just not good enough to do them justice. And I won't be good enough unless I write, so I work on other things to practice, but everything else feels empty so I don't care, et cetera, ad nauseam aaarrrgghh
HERE HAVE THIS GIF OF A CHIPMUNK GROOMING ITSELF
August 13, 2011 at 6:33 AM
You've noticed that Clarion West drives you insane once you leave, right? At least you're dealing better than I am. I stopped writing for several months entirely. I also stopped talking to most of my friends.
Someone told me something once: Your job is not to judge the worthiness of stories. Your job is only to write them. Failure to write them, even in concern of their worthiness, is failure. It's something I try, and sometimes fail, to keep in mind, especially when the stuff I'm producing is crap.
By and large, no one will see the crap anyway. That's what editors and agents are for – to winnow out the bad stuff. And you often can't tell, with your own work, what is or isn't the bad stuff.
August 13, 2011 at 6:36 AM
@AnBetter than I *did*, rather. I have started writing again, but damn, the post-CW slump was a vicious one.
(I seem to be in a post-Launchpad one right now, actually. It's something I may have to beware of, regarding workshops: they enrich me immeasurably, but I seem to hit a crisis point after each one and just shut down while my brain rearranges itself to fit in the new things I've learned.)
August 13, 2011 at 7:07 AM
I'm kind of... yeah, CW is now clicking into the Issues Fractal. I don't know how much of it is the lower-level upheaval of coming home, moving, moving, moving, school starts, et cetera, and how much of it is me using that as an excuse. So you're not the only one a bit disoriented.
August 13, 2011 at 9:12 AM
Good point. I too have the stories I love, and the stories I write. They tend not to overlap -especially at CW. Maybe this is why Margo said we all lacked heart. But, JHC on toast, who's going to shove their favorite head friends out into the world in the form a one-week first-draft story and let them be judged on that?
But you're also right that we need to practice. Musicians play scales and athletes run sprints and we...write stories to see whether we can. I think the danger is when we forget that's why we're writing. Which is easy to do, because you can't write those practice stories without being committed to them, and commitment begins to morph into attachment, and soon you (we? I?) forget that these aren't the *real* stories, the ones that matter so much that we got here in the first place. So, thanks for the reminder.
August 13, 2011 at 6:26 PM
@An I have zero excuse not to be doing SOMETHING writerly right now -- I've precious little else to do. That stuff about writing-not-judging is good to remember, though I suspect, easier said than done. :<
@diatryma Ugh, and I have the moving bit to look forward to, too. I'm afraid if I let myself slow down too much, I'll never get back in gear.
@alering YES, THIS, EXACTLY, and much better put. Paul said the same thing, too, re: application stories, and I couldn't in good conscience object.
August 14, 2011 at 11:01 AM
There's a literary war going in inside my head. Hunter S. Thompson screaming about arriving at the grave with your body a smoldering wreck and every damn person in the Sandman telling Dream, "You know, you can always say 'no.'" Decided to go with something from the former and I think I'm going to need a few months to decide if that was a good idea or not.
Can't say much for Clarion West except that yes I understand that sentiment about loving one's characters. I love your characters. I hope that others love mine. Failing that, I hope that they loathe and are haunted by them.