fair warning, dear reader, that will be your question when you finish reading this post which consists of a heaping helping of bitch with a side of aged whine (with a floral bouquet).
a person shouldn't post on their blog when they are feeling depressed, by the way.
am having, predictably (god, i hate how boring i am), and yet again, book publishing angst. sure, i'm not done yet, am only maybe 2/3 of the way done, but i am thinking about the quality of my writing a lot which leads to the question of getting an agent, and getting published, and finally, getting paid. i am not a deep person. i don't have deep writing. i write in a genre that is hot, hot, hot right now, but might be not, not, not hot by the time i finish. i'm not writing in the genre because it's hot, but because i love it. whether or not i love it does not matter to the publishing industry. sometimes, love just ain't enough.
so the question is -- how do i motivate myself to write through these doubts? i am a goal-oriented person. don't laugh. i really am. i need to have predictable outcomes, need to know that if i input a, i will get output b. and with this whole writing thing, it's driving absolutely fucking crazy that i don't know what the outcome is going to be -- i mean i know i will have a 300 page book manuscript on my hard drive, and that's something important... but the other stuff is important too. the recognition that what you have done is worth someone else's time. the fact that it's out of my control past a certain point makes me feel, to paraphrase frodo, like butter scraped over too much bread. or, alternatively, like my head is going to explode.
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2 comments:
My first response was: "Shut the Frak up, your writing is brilliant" and then I thought, hmm, maybe this isn't the time for tough love...
You've got to finish the book! I think it's as good, if not better than half the stuff that's out there now!
there are times when i do worry that my writing is crap, but this particular crisis arose from the panicked thought that even if the book turns out to be good, that's no guarantee that it will be published. like you said -- if half the stuff out there isn't as good as my stuff, then there's got to be a whole half of people who should be getting published who aren't! ack!
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