This is a jumbled rant. I repeat, the following is a rumblin’, stumblin’, bumblin’ attempt at working through my negative feelings about the writing process via (ironically) a written sob-fest. The following is not going to be graceful, and in all likelihood will run in zig-zagging circles around the concept of “a point.”
Many of you know I’m working on a novel. I say that in all seriousness while trying to not take myself too seriously. I can’t help but feel silly when I say it (one gets a lot of indulgent, mildly-amused smiles when admitting to working on a novel), but since I’ve actually got a box of index cards detailing the chain of events and I’ve written over 200 pages of actual story (that’s not counting all the character, world, and race histories), I have to soothe my insecurities by telling myself that I’ve at least “done” something.
But my creation is an evil and petty thing. Characters decided to “be” different people than I first imagined when plotting an outline, and sometimes they’ve just flat out decided to do something I hadn’t planned for. It’s maddening, firstly because I find it annoying that I don’t have complete control and secondly because I feel a little weird admitting my characters “do” things that I don’t tell them to do.
It exacerbates my (already significant) insecurities. (As a note, there are things I feel confident about: walking in ridiculously high heels, controlling a 75 pd. German Shepherd, wearing whatever odd outfit that strikes my fancy, reaching a logical conclusion when faced with a moral delimma, among other things. Didn’t want anyone to feel bad for me, the insecurity is pretty much focused within the realm of my writing). I no longer trust my husband’s opinion. I mean, after pg. 120 or so he just started telling me the story was great (with the exception of some details here and there) and that just can’t be true. It must suck, because it is first draft. I know the first 100pgs. sucked, because I’ve never written creative fiction before and my inexperience alone would demand that I pay a hefty fee of embarrassment to the Deity of Fiction before I stopped being completely god-awful. After the first 100pgs., I could look over sections with the confidence that, “well, this isn’t TOO bad–this is useable, with several revisions. . .”
By pg. 150 or so, I started thinking the whole process was doable. A ton of work, but I realized that before I started. I still feel utterly lost when I try to wrap my brain around the idea of “finishing” the project, but I feel much better about sitting down and writing a couple pages a day. And then my characters throw me a curve ball, and I get paranoid about what Reader will say when he/she looks at this, and then I talk to Bandit because my head has suddenly become this super-highway of babbling characters playing bumper cars with my self-loathing.
“Free honest-feedback” is a false promise, and it discourages me more than anything. People offer help, but I either get an “I like it,” or *silence.* I don’t know how many times I need to reassure people that I expect this to need work–plenty of work!–to make them believe me enough to say, “this right here. . .sucks.” I’ve gotten a few pages of red from ONE person and I’m pretty sure I almost peed my pants with joy. The Negative Nancy in my head listens to the silence and then starts buzzing in my ear that the silence is indicative of one of two possibilities: 1) They got bored and never read it, and don’t want to tell me as much because they’re afraid I’ll get mad/hurt/etc., OR 2) They read it and it sucked, but they don’t want to tell me because they’re afraid I’ll get mad/hurt/etc.
*Sigh*
Hubby tells me this is why I have so few *close* friends. Very few people, apparently, believe that blunt honesty is a truer sign of friendship than a kind half-truth. Being completely honest, when that honesty hurts, is somehow thought to be cruel. I don’t get that. If someone looks like a hot mess and their breath reeks, you’re not doing them any kindness by letting them go to an interview where their potential employer will note on their resume, “hot mess, stinky breath.” If my writing is horribad, and I someday manage to package my baby up and send it to an editor, the editor isn’t going to say, “Aw, I bet she’s a nice persona and she tried hard,” and send me a letter of encouragement–he’s just gonna lob that failscript into the nearest trash can (and I’ve read that so much of the industry relies on chance that I don’t want to throw away–no pun intended–a single chance at acceptance).
I don’t know. It’s frustrating. The best I can do for myself is to continue to completely ignore the execution of what I’ve written beyond the most recent 10pgs., and then later I can attempt to go back with the mindset of Reader and tear the thing to bits. I don’t trust myself to not be blind to many of my personal flaws, but hey–it’s another skill I can work on adding to my repertoire, right?