For some reason I’ve been doing a lot of whining about writing lately, especially on Here to Create.
Sorry about that.
I whine that I’m not revising the project I should be, that all my shorts turn into sagas, and on and on. But the problem is that I’m overthinking instead of writing. I know that the writing isn’t just going to flow all the time and of course I need to think about what does and doesn’t work in my stories so I can fix them instead of just shoving them in a drawer or worse, out into the world as they are.
What I don’t need to do is get wrapped up in meta-writing to the exclusion of real writing. Can I call myself a writer? What does that mean anyway? What if I never get the motivation and this thing whithers and dies and I’ve wasted all this time? What if my writing has some fatal flaw that I can never overcome?
It’s ok, you can say it. I get sick of listening to me too.
Most of my worries are pretty pointless when I write them out, which is the benefit of doing it, as long as I don’t let it go too far. This weekend I did something novel, for me at least. I ignored my angst about whether or not I can write and just wrote. I revised a short-short story I’ve had sitting around for a couple of weeks and ended up pretty pleased with it. And then I spun those characters around, made them do the hokey-pokey, and ended up with some serious progress on another short story.
It’s true, whining gets you nowhere unless you’re one of my cats.
That's his food bin he's standing on, in case we missed the point of all that noise he's making.
I’ve been compiling writers articles about writing for my website and my first decent submission received was on the distinction between a writer and an author.
I’m not really sure even myself. I’m glad I’m a painter. They argue about craftsman v.s. artist, but there’s no painter v.s. finger painter.
Why are writers so hard on themselves?
my stories are terrible. i whine all the time, i guess. i have problems with TMIS. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr……