Insufficiently entertaining
Oct. 29th, 2004 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ksmithThat's how I feel when I check my Friends list for whatever reason and find that someone has un-Friended me. I know this is a big place, and folks skip around for whatever reason. But I feel like I'm holding forth at a party only to find people yawning and checking their watches. Thank you thank you. 'preciate it. Words are my life, after all.
Some people can write quite good posts containing litcrit or discussions about writing, drawing out the conversation and keeping it flowing. Beyond the occasional word count or character-based mutter, I don't think you'll find much of that here. I'm not particularly good at criticism, or about explaining how I write or what type of writer I am. I admire the folks who can boil down methods or styles to a few facile sentences--the ability to define succinctly is a gift. I just write--it Happens. Bubbles up in the backbrain and downloads, usually early in the morning. If I had to consciously think out all the things I've written, I don't think I'd have finished one book, much less four. And the fact that I can't readily define what I do or how I do it makes me feel as though it's something outside me, beyond my control, and therefore not really mine. This conflicts quite nicely with the feeling that I'm not really a pro if I can't turn it off and on like a faucet. After all, it's a job, isn't it? Writing, as has been driven into all our heads with 40-lb sledges over the past however many years, is a Business. Product is Consumed by the Marketplace at a rapid clip, and my job is to kick out more product in a timely (more or less) manner.
So here I sit, wrestling with that which isn't really mine, trying to control that which does as it damned well pleases. Talking about crabapples really is simpler.
Some people can write quite good posts containing litcrit or discussions about writing, drawing out the conversation and keeping it flowing. Beyond the occasional word count or character-based mutter, I don't think you'll find much of that here. I'm not particularly good at criticism, or about explaining how I write or what type of writer I am. I admire the folks who can boil down methods or styles to a few facile sentences--the ability to define succinctly is a gift. I just write--it Happens. Bubbles up in the backbrain and downloads, usually early in the morning. If I had to consciously think out all the things I've written, I don't think I'd have finished one book, much less four. And the fact that I can't readily define what I do or how I do it makes me feel as though it's something outside me, beyond my control, and therefore not really mine. This conflicts quite nicely with the feeling that I'm not really a pro if I can't turn it off and on like a faucet. After all, it's a job, isn't it? Writing, as has been driven into all our heads with 40-lb sledges over the past however many years, is a Business. Product is Consumed by the Marketplace at a rapid clip, and my job is to kick out more product in a timely (more or less) manner.
So here I sit, wrestling with that which isn't really mine, trying to control that which does as it damned well pleases. Talking about crabapples really is simpler.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-29 10:04 pm (UTC)And you know, writing is a job, but it's also first and foremost (in my head, anyway) an art and a craft. The craft carries me through when the art isn't firing, but I still think, sometimes, that when one gets a little too facile at turning it on and off easily, it maybe means one isn't bleeding on the page quite as one used to.
I don't pretend this applies to anyone else, but if I'm not sweating, I'm never sure I'm working up to my potential.
And Product is all very nice, but I also think it's oversold as a be-all and end-all.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-30 06:32 pm (UTC)I have bled on the page, though. The recovery time is significant.
I'm not saying that it isn't worth it or that at times it isn't necessary. I just think that in this as in most things, there has to be a happy medium.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-30 06:41 pm (UTC)Oh, heck yeah. I'm not into the whole tortured artiste thing; too much like high school. What I'm saying is just agreement that it *can't* always be treated as just a job, despite what we're told. Because it's also a craft.