Spring Rain
Couple of neat things: a Pub Rants post about why you need to pitch a complete manuscript and a Romancing the Blog bit about antiheroes. I do very much view Batman as an antihero, because he’s in it for revenge. Plus, he’s a vigilante–kind of a cheap and easy way to build an antihero, but it works if you don’t make him too romantic-squishy.
Now I’m thinking about heroes in antihero clothing. Wow. Possibilities.
In other news, I saw the end of the YA last night. Must be the spring rain, as the Selkie says. Damn Muse. She thinks if I have time to comment on Internet stuff that she’s obviously not working me hard enough.
Speaking of which, there’s still reverb going on about my Friday post at Fangs, Fur & Fey. Some people are still not reading 90% of the post–they’re just skimming until they get to one particular thing and then hanging all sorts of things on it. *sigh* Ah, teh interwebs.
Go ahead and get out the pitchforks. Because I don’t believe that just anyone who has an idea for a book that they’re going to write someday when they have time is a “writer”. There are people who like to call themselves writers for one reason or another, and I was posting about what separates them from the people I call writers–the ones who do the goddamn work. If you don’t agree, fine. The world is wide enough for both of us to call parts of it what we will. Who cares about the opinion of a barely-midlist hack anyway?
It is an unpopular thing, to state that one must have hard work and discipline to be a writer. And a lot of people are overlooking the fact that I said over and over again in the comment thread (because it was off the point of the post) that once you have built up your discipline you can “take a day off” and your busy little brain will continue to work on the story. That daily discipline will carry you and it DOES carry several professional writers, including a few who brought that up in the comments.
But that discipline absolutely needs to be reinforced and cared for just like muscle tone. Move it or lose it. It is fragile, and it is easy for it to succumb to timesuck.
In all the hubbub, I did not see anyone advocating another specific route that would do what I said writing every day does, to wit:
* You give yourself the clearest possible signal that this work is not going to go away, and that you are committed to it.
* You bolster the habit of just sitting down and putting your hands to the effing keyboard.
* You give yourself the opportunity to practice hard enough and long enough to start producing readable product.
* You give your writing a priority to match other priorities in your life.
So some people took issue and umbrage…but they didn’t bother to offer an alternative that would satisfy those things. If you have a Sooper-Sekrit System that will give you those benefits without writing every day, good for you.
Go do it. Don’t wait around to tell me how wrong I am, just go do it. You’ve got the jump on me, sweetheart. Use it.
There is no magic flexible bullet that will grant you writing success. If I told you there was, I’d be lying. But you know, it’s a lot easier to be successful the more professional and prepared you are, and that discipline is part of preparedness and professionalism. I would be irresponsible and untruthful if I didn’t say it.
You can hit the ball out of the park on a fluke, yes. But it’s a lot, lot easier if you’ve trained for it and showed up at the bloody park when the game’s on.
A lot of people like to pretend “writing” is some sort of super-classified Arte you have to Suffer and have the Magic Ingredients for, which are jealously guarded secrets only available to NYT Bestsellers. It does serve a lot of ego to act like this stuff is FM (F!cking Magic, for those of you not married to my mechanical-engineer husband. *grin*) Saying, plainly and clearly, what I believe about professionally writing strikes to the heart of that dynamic–I’m attempting to deobfuscate, with my Friday posts.
Writing, like any creative endeavor, ain’t simple and it ain’t easy, and there is no magic key–but hard work and persistence can prepare you for whatever magic there is to happen.
I don’t have a lot of use for most of the stuff Natalie Goldberg said (there was a lot of complicating the simple in there) but one thing she said did particularly stood out, for me. It was about sitting at her typewriter and looking out the window, and feeling a rush of Joy and Love For All Things. When she told her teacher this, thinking she had hit some sort of enlightenment, he simply said, “Quit stalling. Get back to work.” (I’m paraphrasing, she wrote it better.)
And on that note, dear Readers, I’m going back to work.
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