(no subject)
2/7/08 21:57![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyI'm coming back to chew, again, on this silly question of whether I am a writer, whether I should be a writer, whether I should work harder on a consistent basis at writing things or whether it's not really worth the trouble.
First of all I'm not one of those people who believes that if you don't have a burning, undeniable, insistent desire to write, you should just quit. How many other pursuits do we treat that way? If you're vaguely interested in cooking, you don't have to want to become Emeril. You can be content to make dead-simple stir-frys while watching sitcoms over your shoulder, or you can take two or three favorite dishes and refine them to perfection, or you can buy a new Cooks Illustrated every two months and work painstakingly through the most interesting recipes to see which ones you want to add to your repertoire, or any number of other possibilities.
Writing is different because you don't get to eat something good when you're done. (Actually, I do tend to take myself out for ice cream when I finish a chapter, but anyway...) Unless you are willing to work very, very hard, you're probably not going to write something publishable and see it through to publication. So I do understand what people say when they say that: they're saying that you can't reasonably expect to get fame and fortune unless you work very hard, and even if you do work very hard you probably can't reasonably expect to get fame and fortune, so. It helps if you don't have any choice but to write.
But writing isn't that kind of obsessive codependent romance for me. It's more like a friendship: I can live without it, but I like it and it makes me happy so why should I? Still, that's the big picture, and the little picture is about what I feel like doing in the evenings when I don't have anything in particular that needs to get done.
That brings me back to the book Refuse to Choose and how it suggests that sometimes you just want to get one or two or three specific things out of a particular interest. It's fairly clear what I get out of writing. It's an extension of the stories I've been making up in my head since I can remember. It's not about wish fulfilment, precisely. It's about giving my brain a place to retreat to when I need it -- when some other person's fictional melodrama is a lot more appealing than my own. It's about being able to choreograph satisfying emotional arcs and replay them over and over until they come out the right way. Which is why I don't have that much patience for plot or setting except as tools to pull characters into the right spots.
Does that remind you of something? Like, maybe, 93% of fanfiction ever written?
Maybe I should find a fandom that pushes all my buttons and just hang out there writing fanfiction.
Or else I could just write manga. In the style of XKCD.
That is a curiously cheering thought.
First of all I'm not one of those people who believes that if you don't have a burning, undeniable, insistent desire to write, you should just quit. How many other pursuits do we treat that way? If you're vaguely interested in cooking, you don't have to want to become Emeril. You can be content to make dead-simple stir-frys while watching sitcoms over your shoulder, or you can take two or three favorite dishes and refine them to perfection, or you can buy a new Cooks Illustrated every two months and work painstakingly through the most interesting recipes to see which ones you want to add to your repertoire, or any number of other possibilities.
Writing is different because you don't get to eat something good when you're done. (Actually, I do tend to take myself out for ice cream when I finish a chapter, but anyway...) Unless you are willing to work very, very hard, you're probably not going to write something publishable and see it through to publication. So I do understand what people say when they say that: they're saying that you can't reasonably expect to get fame and fortune unless you work very hard, and even if you do work very hard you probably can't reasonably expect to get fame and fortune, so. It helps if you don't have any choice but to write.
But writing isn't that kind of obsessive codependent romance for me. It's more like a friendship: I can live without it, but I like it and it makes me happy so why should I? Still, that's the big picture, and the little picture is about what I feel like doing in the evenings when I don't have anything in particular that needs to get done.
That brings me back to the book Refuse to Choose and how it suggests that sometimes you just want to get one or two or three specific things out of a particular interest. It's fairly clear what I get out of writing. It's an extension of the stories I've been making up in my head since I can remember. It's not about wish fulfilment, precisely. It's about giving my brain a place to retreat to when I need it -- when some other person's fictional melodrama is a lot more appealing than my own. It's about being able to choreograph satisfying emotional arcs and replay them over and over until they come out the right way. Which is why I don't have that much patience for plot or setting except as tools to pull characters into the right spots.
Does that remind you of something? Like, maybe, 93% of fanfiction ever written?
Maybe I should find a fandom that pushes all my buttons and just hang out there writing fanfiction.
Or else I could just write manga. In the style of XKCD.
That is a curiously cheering thought.
(no subject)
3/7/08 03:34 (UTC)Also I really like your comparison of cooking to writing.