For those of us who spend a whole morning writing their heart out and then think 'What the fuck am I doing?'
We all get this. Right now I'm on the good old fashioned 'Am I really any good at this?' train. Answer: yeah, I think so, that's why I always carry on whenever I get this. What I do keep wondering is why I come back to this feeling so often having been there before? I know I believe in myself, so why is it my own thoughts still sabotage me?
Usual sort of scenario that starts it off: I've worked since 7AM just because I was awake and up, by 1PM I've got 5000 words, my novel's now up to a running total of 40,000 and I've just delivered my narrator to a hugely significant moment in his life so far and it feels like things are happening. Then at the back of mind I get 'What if this stuff I'm enjoying so much is really a complete disaster and I just can't see it?' Then I get 'How many more drafts of this can I survive if my Ideal Reader doesn't like it when she eventually gets it?'
Then I get the stuff that's just neurotic. 'What if people hate my main character?' or 'I've got two young characters who are in love...but is it convincing to anyone else or am I writing Twilight without the vampires?' or even 'Will anyone ever take this seriously?' (Like I should care, at this stage!)
Echoes of old critisism for the same story and others always comes in and then it's 'Am I making that same mistake again here?'
Been here before. Best thing to do is always go do something different for a while, exercise is usually best, and while I'm doing it I try to think of something positive from today's session.
So I wonder, is there anyone out there who's succeeded in stopping these sorts of thoughts from happening? How often does everyone else get on the self doubt train and what do you do about it?
Get someone honest to read it.
Because frankly, what you're writing might actually be terrible. It might be great. But the writers are usually not in a position to know.
Isn't that exactly why a site like LitReactor exists?
I write mainly to torment my characters, so it is easy to judge how I'm doing on that.
To be honest, man, I think you need some confidence. Setting aside the fact that we're all here to become better writers and all are at different stages of development and even understanding what it means to be a good writer, I firmly believe the end-goal shouldn't be to be a comparatively good writer. For me, it's to be a good Tim Johnson. For you, it should be a good Chacron.
Thing is, we all have our writing identity, which is dictated by what we like, and we develop it inside a vacuum. It's unavoidable. No matter how much we share our work and how much feedback we get from people, it's always going to pass through that filter of "what do I want to write?"
I learned a long time ago that not everyone is going to like what I do and that it's OK. Striving to please all of your readers is compromise. Write what you want to read, and if you read it and enjoy it, you're headed in the right direction.
Of course, getting feedback is critical to the process. Hearing what other people have to say about your work is incredibly useful, but I think it's important everyone understands how to use it. Evaluate yourself and your work. Listen to what people say. Let it inform you on how you've accomplished your goal. Reject any feedback that conflicts with your goal, but consider altering your strategy to make that goal clearer.
And I've seen you do this. You've flat out told me, "no," in response to some feedback before, and that is a sign that you are already more mature than most writers. It shows that you understand what you are trying to do and that what I had to say conflicted or worked against that.
I talk about Stephen King a lot. I used to like him a lot more than I do now, but I still know quite a bit about him. So I use his life as talking points. Anyway, when asked what drew him to his wife, King said he was in a poetry workshop with her and he said she had an exceptional ability: he could tell she knew what she was trying to accomplish with her writing. And he realized it was something he lacked, himself.
Stop what you're doing for a moment. Look at your writing. Do you understand what you are trying to accomplish? Are you just putting pieces where they fit, or are you striving to achieve a desired effect with your writing? Are you trying to communicate a message?
It may seem obvious, but SO many writers don't. You'll often hear someone ask a writer what his novel is about, and the writer will respond, "I don't know. I haven't written it yet." It is incredibly difficult to understand your own work, and I think it's one of the last things you master as a writer. You have to seek to understand what you're trying to do and what you're actually doing. The latter you can only fully realize by letting people read your work.
All of this is to say this question you're asking, "Am I any good," is proof that you're stopping to question the quality of your writing, and that only leads to better writing.
It takes words to make words.
If you have to scrap something because it isn't up to par, it isn't a waste because it took you writing those words to understand what you were doing and achieve whatever that end result will be. And this is why I don't advocate measuring progress by how many words you've written today. Because it doesn't matter, and it's a really phony measurement of the end product.
My novel, which I'm still shopping around (and not as diligently as I should) is 127,000 words. It took over a million (just a guess because I didn't actually count) to get those 127,000 words, though. And it was because, with each draft, I stopped and said, "This isn't what I want it to be. I'm not achieving my goals." So I scrapped it and began anew.
Anyway, everyone works differently. Perhaps these episodes of self doubt will become part of your process. Maybe they will turn into good things that you can use as a slap across your face to make you stop and look at what you're doing. It's a good thing because so many writers just aren't that conscious of their own work. They drop 3,000 words onto the page and proclaim, "There! My story is told!" I don't think it works that way. Questioning yourself is the doorway to edits and revisions, which are vital. Just don't let it become a barrier.
find a network of peers
workshop your stories
take some classes with your mentors/heroes
rinse, repeat
To be honest i've been getting these feelings alot recently. As a result it's kinda made me a lot slower in my writing process and a little overly precious about workshoping, before I'd get so excited after a few drafts and email it off to mates or workshop it here and the feedback although very insightfull and detailed really just took the wind out of my sails and started to think it was all pretty much a waste of time.
The only way i've tried to combat it is to do shorter stories than i've done before with more toned down simpler plots and sign up for the gammar course starting here on the 6th. I've stopped reading novels and started battering short story collections.
Claire vaye watkins work and Richard's story Say yes to pleasure have pretty much blown my mind over the last two weeks, that kind of feeling after reading that made want to throw everything I've so far in the bin and really try because if I get anyway near half way as good as that stuff it would a real achivement.
Just keep writing, reading and as macready says at the end of the thing, lets just see what happens.
Well like a friend of mine always says, nothing is that good but nothing is that bad. We've all wrote things we loved that we came to hate and vice versa. Pay attention to your feelings, but take them with a grain of salt. And don't feel guilty for having self doubt it is normal.
I have self doubt all the time, especially now since I'm no longer working full time and am relying PURELY on my savings to finish an ebook before possibly looking for work again. My girlfriend constantly asks me where my money will come from, and I don't even know what to say.
How do override my self doubts? Desperation. The need to be able to create something worthwhile, or else completely failing at everything I've gambled these past few months on, keeps me waking up early and writing and perfecting what I do until the late evening.
I also listen to motivational speakers and hang out with a lot of ambitious and passionate people who actually understand what the hell I'm trying to do.
Maybe you could get a job that mostly involves waiting. I've written about a lot that way.
Chacron, thanks for posting about your insecurities. We all have them, that's for sure.
Tim, that's a firebrand of a response. Something from which we can all pull what we need.
And then there's Richard, who must be in editing mode, and also makes me want to wash my hair.
I think this is a good thread. I know, for me, it's like I have two people in my head, and one of them is "This is going great!" girl, and the other is "Fuck, I hope no one ever reads this shit, ever." girl.
Or maybe there's three of us, because I just stand back and let each of them take a turn with the edits, and they both have valuable things to say, it turns out. They're both useful. The positive side knows what the story wants to be, and the negative one is more focused on what it still needs to get there. I just need to keep them both talking, in balance.
It's also very possible that I'm just not getting enough sleep.
I second what Richard said.
You can't work and not get better. Your insecurities will always be there in some shape or form, ask just about any established, wealthy writer (but not Nicholas Sparks who is, apparently, a glaring exception). You have to learn to trust your work, and you really have to learn to trust the long-term process of getting better at it.
@Utah -
You can't work and not get better.
That is true in the long term, with huge glaring, why did I spend two hours revising that to make it worse style exceptions.
You spent two hours revising so that you could tell that you made it worse. If you can see how you made it worse, you're already learning.
Yeah, and if you can only tell because it is a vague feeling you're already breaking your own heart.
Your process may vary, but I find that when I'm staring at something and know something about it isn't right, but can't tell what---that's when I need to put the piece away for a while. I often find when I come back to it with fresh eyes that the problem is easier to identify.
The vague feeling is your instinct kicking in, not a cause for despair at all. If you've got that feeling, then there's a part of your brain that knows what the issue is, but you have to give it peace to process it.
There's many great things in this thread I'd like to comment on, briefly, so thanks for starting it Chacron. This idea about doubt's capability to be both an impediment and a propellant it seems, is a pretty central component to being a writer. This subject reminds me of something I read a long while back (John Gardner: On Becoming a Novelist) in a section called, The Writer's Nature. If I'm recalling it right there was a bit about a certain sort of insecurity being an integral part of that nature; and that it makes sense that someone dissatisfied with the creator's creation to the point he or she needs to create their own subjective version, is bound to be even more dissatisfied with the limits of their own being and whatever creations spring from it.
I found these were thoughts were ones I could identify with:
You'll often hear someone ask a writer what his novel is about, and the writer will respond, "I don't know. I haven't written it yet." It is incredibly difficult to understand your own work, and I think it's one of the last things you master as a writer. You have to seek to understand what you're trying to do and what you're actually doing. The latter you can only fully realize by letting people read your work.
My novel, which I'm still shopping around (and not as diligently as I should) is 127,000 words. It took over a million (just a guess because I didn't actually count) to get those 127,000 words, though. And it was because, with each draft, I stopped and said, "This isn't what I want it to be. I'm not achieving my goals." So I scrapped it and began anew.
Yeah, been through similar stuff. For such a long time I got lost trying to write from the abstract down rather than the ground of character and situation up. So that sort of airy-mannered-frozen bastard bright idea thing can get you a thousand pages in search of a story, that if someone asked you what they were about the choice of answers would lie between, uhhhhhhhmmmmmm and everything both of which translate to nothing. But to drive through to the end of a decent first draft rooted in situation and,character along a plotline, and put a decent ending at least somewhat relative to the beginning on it, is a thing that so many prolific and successful writer's recommend. I think in that same book by King Tim mentioned what he said about his wife's writing above, he had some thing about that need to drive along intuitively to an end without getting all insecure about the mess and the abundance of things which will need to be condensed, excised, moved, and etc. Some funny image he used, like try to imagine you are rowing a bathtub across an ocean, in which case you better paddle like a speed junkie or whatever he said better.
Eespecially that putting a cap on a longer work is integral I think, if a writer is going to be able to make use of the intuitive, which brings me to the second piece of valuable advice from Sread directly above:
Your process may vary, but I find that when I'm staring at something and know something about it isn't right, but can't tell what---that's when I need to put the piece away for a while. I often find when I come back to it with fresh eyes that the problem is easier to identify.
The vague feeling is your instinct kicking in, not a cause for despair at all. If you've got that feeling, then there's a part of your brain that knows what the issue is, but you have to give it peace to process it
And i remember King's advice that once your done rowing, if the thing hasn't sunk on the way across the ocean, put it away for a month or so that the "peace" Sread mentioned is something you can be at least out of the middle of the fire and closer too. Once the beginning and end and whatever mess of a middle is done, the objective skills at least have a chance to kick in. The second draft becomes about structural and refinement, but there is still some intuitive re-creation left too in this phase. Because the whole dialectical-subjective magilla once and entire unit is formed can inform itself between both those two poles beginning and end. So as in the case of the 127,000 words mentioned above, this puts a writer in a position to finally see which stretches are flowing toward his goals and which are not. And with any luck, in terms of whatever capabilities we have as writers at that time, with a lot of perseverance there's a chance for that unity the great books have between plot, character and thematics all the greatest books out there that can inspire and stick with others have.
There is that emotional component writers gotta deal with and probably in porportion to how bad we want to get to the best work any misty-magic God or the devil gave us the ability to do, and that's why I also liked Dwayne's advice:
Well like a friend of mine always says, nothing is that good but nothing is that bad. We've all wrote things we loved that we came to hate and vice versa. Pay attention to your feelings, but take them with a grain of salt. And don't feel guilty for having self doubt it is normal.
.Thanks again for this thread, Rx, Flyby
I've had a few run ins with self doubt and I can say with total confidence that the guy is a total wiener. Next time he rears his ugly head, just kick him square in the balls and then move on. :)
The only way I know that I'm any good at all is that some people find it in their hearts to pay me, ala Stephen King:
"This, of course, is the killer. What is talent? I can hear someone shouting, and here we are, ready to get into a discussion right up there with "what is the meaning of life?" for weighty pronouncements and total uselessness. For the purposes of the beginning writer, talent may as well be defined as eventual success - publication and money. If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented."
There is no other litmus test. If someone is willing to put money on the words you created, then you are indeed talented. Everything else is wank material.
thanks for the kind words, guys. i'll elaborate a little on what i said above.
the only advice i can give, and i've probably already said this in many places is—read, write, and study. read the voices that inspire you, that write what you want to write, and absorb it, then you'll start to look for it, to see it in your own work; write whatever interests you, keep playling around until you find your voice, experiment with short stories; and study—with whatever teachers and authors you can, whatever you can afford. there are a lot of great classes here at LR, shoot my head isn't so big that i stopped studying. in addition to taking classes with Craig Clevenger, Monica Drake, Max Barry, and Jack Ketchum back at the Cult, i took a class with Stephen Graham Jones here at LR. i SUCKED five years ago when i started. my first novel was TERRIBLE. it's been fun reading, writing, and hopefully evolving.
and if there's anything i can do privately to help, let me know:
http://whatdoesnotkillme.com/2013/06/10/editing-services/
getting my MFA, in addition to those classes at LR/Cult really pushed me to read A LOT and to absorb the brilliance of so MANY other authors. i read 60 books one year. it all helps. don't give up. we all doubt ourselves, i dout myself every time i sit down to write, every time i go back to re-read something. it gets better, but you have to put in the work, pour your heart onto the page, and hold nothing back.
As much as I like mutterhals's picture, I must strongly disagree. If that's how someone wants to rate herself, by finding self-worth through other people's economic decisions, fine, none of my business.
But that consumerist zombiefart attitude drives me nuts. It isn't true and has never been true that only those things for which people choose to pay are worthwhile. It's not true in any of the arts, nor even of food. No one thinks that cheeseburgers are only good if you pay for them, or that the cost of a cheeseburger is necessarily proportionate to how good it is. It's just not the case.
As a self-motivator, I can see it working for some people. It's a goal, a benchmark: get paid to write.
Wank material sells pretty well, it turns out. Literal wank material is not the figurative "wank material" of the type nobody wants. Wank material is serious shit, whereas serious shit is mere "wank material."
[I love it.]
I'm just about to post to the workshop so if I've been getting it a lot this week, fingers crossed and all that
@JYH - I'm not sure, but I think it might be a threshold thing, not a more money equals better. To me, it sounded more like, "People are idiots who'll buy anything. If you can't find one who'll buy your writing you aren't that good."
@Dwayne --- Maybe that's more along the lines of what she meant, but it's also wrong. Both halves of your imaginary quote are individually wrong, and they don't support each other.
- "People are idiots who'll buy anything." --- Not all people are idiots, and not all idiots will buy anything.
-
"If you can't find one who'll buy your writing [then] you aren't that good." [I added the "then".] --- This statement assumes a lot.
It assumes you shop your stuff around in order that it may be purchased. The word "can't" limits the evaluation to one of ability rather than willingness or desire.
In context with the "People are idiots" clause, it assumes idiots buy "good" writing. But if they buy "good" writing, they are not just buying "anything" unless they indiscriminately also buy "bad" writing as well (like a gull-dang idiot).
Besides which, people often buy books before knowing whether or not they are any good, so how can that square?
Publishers either publish books they think will sell, or books which will meet some other goal (for instance, prestige or cultural enrichment). - The whole quote simply doesn't stand on its own, nor does it compare accurately to reality.
1) For the most part, yes they are and yes they will. Just look around. We buy foods and drinks we don't like that much that will kill us and make us sick, we smoke, and for the love of Pete we Ke$ha sells a lot of records.
2) It assumes they'll buy good writing, bad writing, and in between writing. It is just to polite to point out that sometimes it won't buy horrible writing.
3) Again yeah it does. You're either suffering from sample bias or just hate admitting money is a sign of competence. Most of us on here could or have already been paid for writing. Maybe not a lot of money, maybe not me, maybe not someplace we want, maybe not the kind of writing we want to do, but yeah a check. And yes some of us much better writers then others, so this seems at first glance bad. But go look around some other writing sites.
Go look around at some of the other writing sites. I don't think that is true of them.
4) I don't feel the 'then' was needed.
I'm not trying to be a dick, but that in almost no way resembles a logical response. Responding to it in detail would take more time than I am willing to commit. But 3 is interesting ---
What do you mean by "sample bias?"
And I haven't ever said that money is never a sign of competence. But it is surely not the only sign, nor always a sign. There are many competent writers who get paid to write and many who do not. There would even be some in between whose work requires some writing but isn't the focus, so they do some job-related writing while on the clock, meaning they technically get paid to write. So they're getting more money for writing than a guy who got a story in an online mag for a one-time fifteen dollar payment. Do you believe that shows they are more competent at writing?
(It should be noted that the claim has been softened from "talented" or "good" to merely "competent.")
I'm not trying to be a dick,
I feel like you're mostly failing at that one.
but that in almost no way resembles a logical response.
In the sense that I didn't rely strictly on Platonic style reasoning, you'd be correct. I used observations. Beyond that you just don't seem to like what is going on around us.
Responding to it in detail would take more time than I am willing to commit.
Sounds a lot like admitting I'm correct or you're a very slow writer.
But 3 is interesting ---
What do you mean by "sample bias?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias
And I haven't ever said that money is never a sign of competence. But it is surely not the only sign, nor always a sign.
There are many competent writers who get paid to write and many who do not. There would even be some in between whose work requires some writing but isn't the focus, so they do some job-related writing while on the clock, meaning they technically get paid to write. So they're getting more money for writing than a guy who got a story in an online mag for a one-time fifteen dollar payment. Do you believe that shows they are more competent at writing?
It seems you are upset and not paying attention, which might be why you are missing the point. Because like I said in the first post,
...I think it might be a threshold thing, not a more money equals better.
I'll adit my word choice may have been imperfect.
(It should be noted that the claim has been softened from "talented" or "good" to merely "competent.")
I have been using the terms 'good', 'talented', and 'competent' interchangeably. May hap this wasn't the best word choice if you view these on a strict guiding scale, but I thought it read better then just repeating the term talented over and over again.
Your point seems to be that you dislike bringing money into mentioning that you someone is any positive term.
Again in summery, yeah I think that if you are unable to sell anything for money it is a pretty good sign you need to work on your writing. If you start adding conditions on, fine your choice. But the only writers I've known to just not ever get any traction even though they kept trying weren't just bad, they were horrible. Worst of the bottom of the barrel. I mean you can get fan fic published these days.
Your point seems to be that you dislike bringing money into mentioning that you someone is any positive term.
Huh? No, I don't automatically get annoyed at discussions involving money. I do get annoyed when people substitute the exchange of money for considerate thought.
It seems you are upset and not paying attention, which might be why you are missing the point.
I'm not upset. This isn't personal. I don't really try to sell my writing. I hardly try to publish it at all, even for free. When I look at the submission/rejection stats for so-called "successful" writers, I am amazed they spend so much time on the non-writing part of writing. So this isn't a matter of my own frustration playing itself out or whatever.
the only writers I've known to just not ever get any traction even though they kept trying weren't just bad, they were horrible. Worst of the bottom of the barrel. I mean you can get fan fic published these days.
Right. Shitty fanfic can be published, so it would seem not even publication is a sign of true talent. It might mean you aren't among the very worst writers in the field. I might agree to that.
I do think "talent" is a different concept from "competence." I can appreciate your intention to jazz it up a bit by changing terms, but competence does not require true talent. It might only require practice and adherence to guidelines or attention to detail. Competent work may be merely satisfactory work, while especially talented work may be equally satisfactory work produced with less effort, or outstanding work produced through a similar degree of effort as a normal, satisfactory, competent work from a person of ordinary talent.
You don't have to study Plato to make a clear statement. If you really think I'm "missing the point," try slowing down a bit and writing that point out in a manner which might be comprehesible to someone other than yourself, and which doesn't rely on speculation regarding what I haven't said.
Again you aren't paying attention. I already laid out my point.
People are idiots who'll buy anything. If you can't find one who'll buy your writing you aren't that good.
By classifying people as idiots, you then make any decision they make inherently idiotic, so if said idiots choose not to buy your writing then it is not ONLY a sign that your work is no good, but equally likely that idiots wouldn't know good writing when they see it and thus wouldn't by something they are incapable of recognizing as quality work. Yes, the likelihood of an unsuccessful piece not being good is there, but the lack of purchase is not a direct indicator of talent or quality. Making absolute statements is ALWAYS a bad idea... ;)
Not that I even want to get into the clusterfucks that are typically your 'arguments', so that's all I'm gonna say on the matter.
By classifying people as idiots, you then make any decision they make inherently idiotic, so if said idiots choose not to buy your writing then it is not ONLY a sign that your work is no good, but equally likely that idiots wouldn't know good writing when they see it and thus wouldn't by something they are incapable of recognizing as quality work. Yes, the likelihood of an unsuccessful piece not being good is there, but the lack of purchase is not a direct indicator of talent or quality. Making absolute statements is ALWAYS a bad idea... ;)
So that doesn't jive with what is going on around us and the idea that people are idiots how?
Not that I even want to get into the clusterfucks that are typically your 'arguments', so that's all I'm gonna say on the matter.
You always say that, but you can't stay away.
You'd be surprised what I can and can't do.
Once you accept that optimism is a type of mistake you seldom get surprised.
Thanks for that stale fortune cookie there, chief.
I think we have to change your screen name to Grumpy Photon!
