The journey to the finish line

[Caged Maiden]

I've often spoken of this journey as a never-ending quest for...something. I suppose it depends on how I'm feeling that day. Sometimes, it's clarity of mind and getting out of my own way and actually find the endpoint. Other times, it's the motivation to crawl out of the mud and continue walking toward the end.

Whatever the pursuit is to me today (or you, if you're in the trenches with me on this one), wherever our spirits are, there is hope. It may be faint, but it exists.

A few months ago, this was how I felt:

I just want to know WHAT I should be doing to further myself as a writer and pursue the kinds of goals that will give me the validation I need to reinvigorate myself. I mean, I can finish this edit. I can write a short story a week. I can write ten more novels. But if that time and work won't lead to feeling like I've accomplished something, I might as well just put down my pen and forget this whole thing, because it's becoming unhealthy to write and write and write, only to be told, "Yeah, this doesn't really work because you need to do this..." and then when I do that thing, I get the same response, but for another issue, and then another, and then more. I just want a loud voice to say, "Yeah, this is really good. I cried when he died, and I really felt I could relate to her situation." Or whatever. To feel like something I'm doing is worthwhile. I just want to feel in myself like I accomplished what I set out to do.

It was a dark time for me, and this last week or so have again entered the shadowy unknown of a troubled and anxious mind.

But today is a new day, I suppose. It doesn't feel like it, but I have to make it so. Because to do nothing would be to accept that I've been defeated. I am not defeated, I am defeating myself. Time to get up.

It's hard. I know better than anyone, the toll it takes on your spirit to be told that your story falls short of someone's expectations, even if it's your own fears doing that telling. We can be our worst critics. And sometimes that process takes hold of us long before we ever consider sharing our work with for critique. Well, what I mean by that is that when you've had dozens of critiques on dozens of shorts and novel chapters, you can sort of feel it coming, and that anxiety can help you build a better story next time, or it can cripple your spirit, I think. Become out of proportion.

I have a difficult time with that last bit. I get overwhelmed by the negativity, my own and things I've been told that just keep echoing forever.

I've gotten some really positive feedback lately, on my rewrite, and at first, I was soaring! I was elated. Three tough readers, and they all liked what I had done and showed me why. Oh man, nothing feels good as that, does it?

But then that pendulum swung up the other way, and I wondered to myself...will they like this next chapter as much? And the positivity bubble burst, shattering pieces of me as the little wisps of positivity tore out of here, taking the warm out of the room, even. And then it felt cold again. And negative. The fear voices returned. MY voice, in MY head.

"This doesn't have enough conflict."

"What's the best way to construct this scene?"

"You have to fix this, because it isn't good enough as it is."

And *sigh* I stopped again. Took a week off and played video games. Only this time it was Pokemon Go, and I took my kids bike riding for miles and miles. Not a bad deal for a writer (read: stationary object chained to a laptop). I lost three pounds...probably off some part that didn't need it...and I wrote to my crit group, asking what in world I'm doing. I'm stuck in a thing that should be easy, but I'm just either stupid beyond words, or I'm confusing myself unnecessarily.

I got thrown a lifeline, and that sort of made the hugest difference.

I'm okay.

That's how I feel today. Like I sort of survived something traumatic, in a way. Crippling self-doubt, I suppose.

Now, I'm not sure I have the answers I need to actually make this next few days of writing shine...but I'm pretty sure that if I write it pretty good...I can revise it again. And again, if I need to. And that's okay. That's what writing is.

And YOU are a writer. A real writer. And fear is the thing that will try to keep people like me from succeeding. And it's just so hard for me to overcome, but each time I get to this dark place, I need to remind myself that I have writing in my blood and I can never lose it. Because to lose it is to stop being.

Be you. Be brave.

 

[Incanus]

I've been in a pretty dark place lately. My rewrite is incredibly daunting, to say the least.

I still try to remain rational though. I'm trying to look at it this way:

What if I produced about the same amount of work every day for the last year and a half? What if my mood remained almost constant during that time? What if my perception of my work barely changed at all from day to day?

If it had been like that, wouldn't that be more than a little strange? If fact, I think that would be out-and-out weird. I would start to suspect that I'm actually an android who was programmed to believe I'm human. Or something, because that just wouldn't be right. When I think about it, it would be creepy if I wasn't experiencing ups and downs through all this.

Maybe we (me, really) need to find a way to celebrate this difficult part of our artistic growth somehow. Turn it on its head, use it in our fiction. Instead of avoiding it, plunge deeper in. I don't know.

How good might our work be if there wasn't a struggle in creating it?

 

[ThinkerX]

::Remembers rewrites. Remembers going back again and again and still finding issues ranging from grammar bugs to descriptions that didn't work. Shudders.::

And three rewrites lined up for this year, yet.

 

[skip.knox]

I hear you, Caged Maiden. I agree we are our own worst critics, but probably in a different sense than you meant.

I've been critting others over the past few months. One thing that strikes me is that I critique the work of others in a far different way than I critique my own stuff, in a couple of ways. For one thing, I always take time to find something positive in the work, both at the micro and the macro level. I try to be sensitive to the other writer, where they are (first novel; twelfth) and what sort of feedback they've asked for. I steer clear of emotionally charged language.

The other thing I've noticed is how I deal with critiques from others. I accept it and act on it, making a change; or, I reject it and that's that. Either way, I move on.

Now, on both of those points, do I handle myself in the same way? Not at all! Internally I use helpful phrases like "this sucks" and "this is just a mess" and "I can't possibly bring order, much less elegance, to this entire chapter, maybe I should throw it out and maybe I should just quit writing." And that's when I'm at my most helpful. At worst, it's just unvoiced negativity crawling around in my gut.

So yeah. Writers are the worst critics of their own writing. Then there's the universal artist anxiety--how am I going to follow that? Because to fail to measure up to our own previous success means that's it. That's all we had, and welcome to the long, slow slide to anonymity. Oh, we writers save the best horror stories for ourselves, don't we? And it's all the worst sort of lie because no one knows how it's going to turn out until we've turned it out, and anyway there will always be someone who loves it and someone who hates it.

People say artists have a muse. Okay, maybe. But we have the muse's evil twin, too, don't we? Some day I'll write a story about her. That'll fix her wagon.

CM, you've done good work. You've pleased readers. You will do it again.

 

[Caged Maiden]

I know so many of us are THERE right now, so I appreciate our work and dedication. Thanks for letting me know I'm not alone. I knew it already, of course.

Rewriting is a really hard thing to do. You want to churn out a chapter a day, like first drafting, but it just doesn't go like that. It takes time and careful consideration, as you pick your story apart and improve on all facets of it at once. Definitely takes the fun out, doesn't it? HA!

You're all super stars. Keep at it! And I will, too.

 

[Chessie]

Girl, hang in there! You're doing awesome and still going! Even with FOUR kids. It makes me feel like a total whiner juggling writing with just one lol. I enjoy your encouraging and very real posts. This gig is hard but anything worth it in life takes work. Currently, I'm not doing any rewriting...but I do have two new projects going. One is novella length and the other I'm aiming for 70k minimum, so I can already see October being a month full of lovely editing!

 

[skip.knox]

Hey, Chesterama, I'm retired with two quiet dogs and a supportive wife.

I still whine. I just have more leisure in which to do it.

 

[Addison]

For those stuck in a dark loop of revision/editing worthy of a Twilight Zone episode, we should start a club. The size would deem us worthy of our own building, jackets, monogrammed cups and so much more.

I'm not sure what's the real fright factor about this loop. The fact that there are new scenes to write (for the umpteenth time), the fact that scenes may need to be cut, or that once we're done with the current "To Do" list the story will be done. For me it's the latter. I have to bribe my readers (kid brother and sister) with chocolate, a day at the pool and video games to read just the first few chapters. I'm really hoping that their reluctance/hate of reading is just them not their generation. Yesterday the internet was down and it was like "Cloverfield". Maybe their dislike of reading is a side effect from being around me, a High Priest Book Worm.

So I'll make this my last post for now as I pursue the end of the story. I have snacks and drinks, nothing to distract me besides the voices in my head. See ya, happy writing!

 

[skip.knox]

For me it's not really fright, it's just weariness. I have a 140k novel that still needs work. The early chapters are fairly well polished and I have a beta reader telling me all the things that need to be changed in just the first 30k or so. And she's not wrong. When I think of how many years I've put into this, and think about how much more has yet to be done, it is all I can do not to lose heart.

But I cannot just walk away, because everyone who has read bits have said it's a good story. They want to see it. And *I* think it's a good story. It's just still so ungainly I can't yet show it to company. I can't quit and some days I can't go on.

It's not a cheery place.

 

[Caged Maiden]

Can't quit and can't go on...yeppers.

 

[Arielcat]

I hear you, Caged Maiden. I agree we are our own worst critics, but probably in a different sense than you meant.

I've been critting others over the past few months. One thing that strikes me is that I critique the work of others in a far different way than I critique my own stuff, in a couple of ways. For one thing, I always take time to find something positive in the work, both at the micro and the macro level. I try to be sensitive to the other writer, where they are (first novel; twelfth) and what sort of feedback they've asked for. I steer clear of emotionally charged language.

The other thing I've noticed is how I deal with critiques from others. I accept it and act on it, making a change; or, I reject it and that's that. Either way, I move on.

Now, on both of those points, do I handle myself in the same way? Not at all! Internally I use helpful phrases like "this sucks" and "this is just a mess" and "I can't possibly bring order, much less elegance, to this entire chapter, maybe I should throw it out and maybe I should just quit writing." And that's when I'm at my most helpful. At worst, it's just unvoiced negativity crawling around in my gut.

So yeah. Writers are the worst critics of their own writing. Then there's the universal artist anxiety--how am I going to follow that? Because to fail to measure up to our own previous success means that's it. That's all we had, and welcome to the long, slow slide to anonymity. Oh, we writers save the best horror stories for ourselves, don't we? And it's all the worst sort of lie because no one knows how it's going to turn out until we've turned it out, and anyway there will always be someone who loves it and someone who hates it.

People say artists have a muse. Okay, maybe. But we have the muse's evil twin, too, don't we? Some day I'll write a story about her. That'll fix her wagon.

CM, you've done good work. You've pleased readers. You will do it again.

I want to read the story about the Muse's evil twin.

 

[Arielcat]

Hey, Chesterama, I'm retired with two quiet dogs and a supportive wife.

I still whine. I just have more leisure in which to do it.

Cool.

 

[The Dark One]

I see I'm coming to this conversation very late but I have some encouraging words, and a suggestion.

I started writing seriously in 1992. I thought I had some talent and there was interest from publishers and agents in my first effort - but it went nowhere. My second effort was much better and again I had some quite serious interest - it went really close - but fell at the final hurdle (the dreaded publishing meeting - one yes, two nos).

All this time I had pestered friends and family to read and give feedback and this was done very grudgingly. The luke-warm feedback, in fact, was entirely useless - mainly because they had no real interest in the first place.

I stopped writing novels for a while and had a go at screenplays. Again, I did no good (despite some apparent interest from producers) but I did learn some important skills re telling a story through dialogue.

Then, one day, walking to my commuter train in the far north of Sydney... I was smacked between the eyes by a really obvious idea for a story which I knew had never been done before, and which I also knew would be pretty commercial if I got it right. (That had never been my motivation, ever.)

I ploughed into the story and quickly rattled off 20 pages of notes and maybe 30 pages of an introduction.

Then it sat in the bottom drawer for a couple of years. I'd pushed it onto friends and family and got the usual luke-warm disinterest - although a mates' two teenage daughters both read the intro and hassled me to keep writing. They weren't really my target audience though.

The breakthrough came when I was on a weekend away with a bunch of people I didn't know well. I was talking to one chap, on the last night, and admitted to being an author - something I didn't quite believe in those days. He asked about what I was working on then asked if he could read it.

I emailed him the 30 pp and the very next night he rang to say he'd read it in a sitting and was demanding more, He absolutely loved it.

This is the kind of moment and inspiration that every writer craves and needs - and he wasn't even a professional. He was just a reader IN MY TARGET AUDIENCE who I was lucky enough to encounter. He fired me up to finish the book and that book was accepted by the first publisher I showed it to when only two thirds finished. The book was published in 2010... 18 years after I decided to be a writer.

So, what I'm saying is this... if you believe in your ability, then you have to keep going. Have to. It can take a while.

You also need a good idea which you execute well. Don't persist with ideas that don't quite work - find a new one.

You also need to find beta readers in your proper target market because only they can give you feedback or encouragement that is genuinely useful.

As for my friends and family... they are far more interested in my work now that I've had five novels published (so I'm a real writer... not a pretend one). They are still totally crap at giving me useful feedback.

 

[pmmg]

I am that point where when my friends and family say they want to read it, I just shrink inside cause I know they don't. I used to be tactful, now I just say we'll be friends in other ways. Or I dont tell them. Beta readers who dont read it, dont help, they just add delay.

 

[The Dark One]

The other thing about friends and family is that they absolutely dread being asked to read and give feedback. They are worried they won't like it and won't be able to tell you as much. That's why they say they "enjoyed it" but can't say why and don't seem to understand or engage with any of your follow up questions. They don't really take you seriously until the industry does.

Professionals can also be bad beta readers because they feel they have to find something to critique to justify their exitence (whether paid or not).

The best beta readers are those who like reading in your genre. Hard to find though...

 

[ThinkerX]

I am that point where when my friends and family say they want to read it, I just shrink inside cause I know they don't. I used to be tactful, now I just say we'll be friends in other ways. Or I dont tell them. Beta readers who dont read it, dont help, they just add delay.

I have a nephew who likes to read. His job is mostly sitting in a warehouse that does the occasional transshipment for a bare handful of industrial clients, and once in a while, visiting said clients. Basically, he's bored spitless much of the time. He has copies of all my books and has yet to read them.

 

[pmmg]

I have a nephew who likes to read. His job is mostly sitting in a warehouse that does the occasional transshipment for a bare handful of industrial clients, and once in a while, visiting said clients. Basically, he's bored spitless much of the time. He has copies of all my books and has yet to read them.

I think i would quit and find a different job

 

[Ban]

I am that point where when my friends and family say they want to read it, I just shrink inside cause I know they don't. I used to be tactful, now I just say we'll be friends in other ways. Or I dont tell them. Beta readers who dont read it, dont help, they just add delay.

Whenever I tell folks irl about my poetry book I lay it on them thick that I don't expect them to read it. Poetry is a niche interest to begin with, and feeling obliged to read it makes it even less accessible. It sure doesn't do anything to aid my sales, but I much prefer lacking a couple of euros to the strain of sold, but unread copies.

 

[ThinkerX]

I think i would quit and find a different job

He's basically marking time until retirement.

 

[pmmg]

He's basically marking time until retirement.

Then I am glad he is so close the end of the long working slog. I'd be writing my books if I had that role.