[Side note: when I first started typing this blog entry, I mistyped it as 'The Mean Reads". Isn't that grand? Sounds like some sort of vicious literary contest.]
You know those days when you get the mean reds?
The mean reds -- you mean like the blues?
No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?
(Breakfast At Tiffany's, 1961)
In the fall of 2003 I sat in on a reading that Ann-Marie MacDonald gave at UVic. She read from her novel As the Crow Flies, and she was, predictably, spectacular. Dramatic, engaging, hilarious -- everything you could possibly want in a speaker. She also gave a great Q&A after the reading. When someone asked her about her next project, she just sort of smiled and held her hands up in the air.
"I can tell you one thing," she said. "It's not going to be a novel. I hope I never have to write another novel. In. My. Life."
Of course everybody laughed. Most of us, I am sure, thought she was joking. (I did.) We thought she was joking even as she went on to say things like, "I find writing a novel to be one of the most horrible, painful things I've ever experienced."
Joke! Haha! Hilarity! Smiles all around. I'll admit to a tiny sliver of incredulity at the time. I didn't believe her. Ms. McDonald, the two-time bestselling novelist, hated writing novels? Tosh, as they'd say in Britain. Complete and utter bunk. Maybe she found aspects of it unpleasant -- who the hell doesn't -- but to hate it enough that she never wanted to write another novel? Silly. Didn't she have ideas? Didn't she have other thoughts as to The Next Book, or even The Next Book After That? Didn't she have moments of blissful joy at her computer screen? Didn't she ever think, this is totally freaking awesome? Didn't those totally freaking awesome moments justify -- indeed, didn't they almost require -- the creation of another book? What would she do if she didn't write another novel?
Obviously, the answer is: lots of things. Ann-Marie MacDonald does lots of things, and she does them all very well. And wouldn't you know it, but we're almost ten years down the road now and there has yet to be another novel. And now I find myself saying: good for you, Ann-Marie. Good for you.
We're all acquainted with the reality of novel-writing as a more-often-than-not-unpleasant business. Sure. But sometimes I forget how forcefully we writers kick and scream against the pressure of the Novel Gods. How much we wail. (If you are in fact unaccustomed to how much authors wail, start following this blog. You'll get the idea inside of ten minutes.) How much we despair. How truly terrible -- and I mean that, in every possible sense of the word -- the business is at times. Sometimes, in the cozy warmth of little publications here and there and meeting other folk of the writerly tribe, it is possible to forget how awful the act of writing can be.
Today I almost dissolved into a snot-ridden mess at the computer. I don't know what started it, but suddenly I was ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that my time was up. That it had in fact never started, that the train would simultaneously never arrive and yet (in an astounding display of physics) had already managed to disappear in a puff of tired clichés and lackluster verbs. Done. I was finished. FINISHED AS A WRITER, BY GOD. It was just that simple.
Sometimes you want to say to the Leafs: guys, give it up and golf 365 days a year. And sometimes you want to say to yourself: dude, put the dreams away and start being useful. You are No Good. You've had Extraordinary Luck, but your period of sunshine is over and now it's time to Get Real. You will never Be Anything. You will never Write Anything. Your new novel Stinks. You are Garbage. You are Garbage enough that you feel the need to capitalize everything, thereby adding Weight and Gravitas to the pithy little worries in your pithy little life.
Etc.
Of course, soon enough Twitter (because I am incapable, it would seem, of soldiering through these bouts alone, which is another thing to feel guilty about, but whatever) came to the rescue. I tell myself: it's just a draft, and genius can come later, said one friend. Don't give up. Tell your inner critic to shut up and just keep going, said another.
Read something amazing and aspire, said one more. And when I gloomily shot back with, But what if you read something and you just think, "Why even bother?", said friend gave me exactly the tough love answer required.
That's wanton self-destruction. Stop it.
Indeed. Stop it, Amanda. So you're afraid of that niggling "what if". So what? You do not, as dear Sugar once said, get to decide all that much about your work apart from the actual working of it. You don't get to have control over anything except those words that you put down. Who thinks "why bother"? Givers-up, that's who. You KNOW that. So the mean reds have descended. So what? You know what you're afraid of -- you're afraid that All 'Twill Be in Vain. But what does that mean, exactly? Sure, you want to be a successful writer. One day. Maybe. If the gods are kind. But you also want to be a good writer, even more than you want to be a successful one. (And while we're at it, what exactly does "successful" mean, anyhow?) And you're slogging through these moments of unease and icky self-pity and doubt and horribleness precisely so that you can be a bad writer, and learn from there how to be a good one.
As it happens, that friend of yours so ready with the tough love also had this wisdom to say: most sports teams need to spend a certain amount of time being bad before they can be any good. They need to start the team from the ground up, and grow together as a unit. (This was, by the way, a separate conversation, but lo and behold, it fits! AND SO I'M PUTTING IT IN.) The Leafs haven't done this. The franchise is too much of a machine -- they'll sell the arena out anyway, win or lose, so why bother putting in the extra time and effort? Why bother going through the slog? Except that you don't build a winning team that way. That's not how it happens.
Okay, so the metaphor isn't perfect. I'm not talking about winning. Obviously. But how easy, truly, to forget that small fact of the matter: we're always spending time being bad, we writers. You slog through the angsty poetry of your teenage years in the hopes that one day you'll finally start to understand how words go together. You put in the time. You get better. And as you get better, you realize that you'll never actually put those angsty terrible words, or those clichés, or those purple phrases aside, not quite. You weed them out, sure, but drafting will forever be the process.
I do know what started the emotional dissolve today, actually. I almost-dissolved because I was working on a scene and trying to think of exciting verbs and nothing -- absolutely nothing -- was coming to mind. My verbs were dull. My words were all dull. It was but a short jump from that trembling place to the Horrible Pit of ALL OF MY WRITING IS DULL, AND WILL NEVER GO ANYWHERE, SOB SOB.
But it's just a draft. That's all it is. I'm not under deadline. I'm not about to shoot this off to my agent. (Thank the fiery gods for that.) It. Is. Just. A. Draft. Like my friend said: the genius can come later. Besides -- you want to be a good writer, yes, but even more than that, even more than wanting to be a good AND successful writer, Amanda, you want to be someone who likes what she does at the end of the day. It's that simple. You love words. You choose, day in and out, to sit down at your computer with your cup of tea because that's exactly how you want to spend your day. You have your Ann-Marie moments of horrible pain, sure. But sometimes you still find it lovely. And isn't that a lucky thing? Think of all the people the world over who don't get to do what they love. Think of that.
So I "stoppited" and kept on writing and repeated the genius mantra out loud, while at work. (Yes. My Real Life workplace affords me time and space to do my own writing. I've laid many a burnt vegetable offering at the altar of the Writing Gods to swing that deal, let me tell you. It also had a lot to do with sheer dumb luck.) And eventually the Mean Reds went away, and I kept on writing, and I tried to worry less about finding exciting words, and then a couple of hours or so later I came across this quote, from this post by Chuck Wendig, and now the serendipitous nature of the day's unfolding is complete, and I can bid you all good night.
Finding the perfect word is as likely as finding a downy-soft unicorn with a pearlescent horn riding a skateboard made from the bones of your many enemies. Get shut of this notion. The perfect is the enemy of the good. For every sentence and every story you have a plethora of right words. Find a good word. Seek a strong word. But the hunt for a perfect word will drive you into a wide-eyed froth.
So there, folks. So there.
You know those days when you get the mean reds?
The mean reds -- you mean like the blues?
No. The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?
(Breakfast At Tiffany's, 1961)
In the fall of 2003 I sat in on a reading that Ann-Marie MacDonald gave at UVic. She read from her novel As the Crow Flies, and she was, predictably, spectacular. Dramatic, engaging, hilarious -- everything you could possibly want in a speaker. She also gave a great Q&A after the reading. When someone asked her about her next project, she just sort of smiled and held her hands up in the air.
"I can tell you one thing," she said. "It's not going to be a novel. I hope I never have to write another novel. In. My. Life."
Of course everybody laughed. Most of us, I am sure, thought she was joking. (I did.) We thought she was joking even as she went on to say things like, "I find writing a novel to be one of the most horrible, painful things I've ever experienced."
Joke! Haha! Hilarity! Smiles all around. I'll admit to a tiny sliver of incredulity at the time. I didn't believe her. Ms. McDonald, the two-time bestselling novelist, hated writing novels? Tosh, as they'd say in Britain. Complete and utter bunk. Maybe she found aspects of it unpleasant -- who the hell doesn't -- but to hate it enough that she never wanted to write another novel? Silly. Didn't she have ideas? Didn't she have other thoughts as to The Next Book, or even The Next Book After That? Didn't she have moments of blissful joy at her computer screen? Didn't she ever think, this is totally freaking awesome? Didn't those totally freaking awesome moments justify -- indeed, didn't they almost require -- the creation of another book? What would she do if she didn't write another novel?
Obviously, the answer is: lots of things. Ann-Marie MacDonald does lots of things, and she does them all very well. And wouldn't you know it, but we're almost ten years down the road now and there has yet to be another novel. And now I find myself saying: good for you, Ann-Marie. Good for you.
We're all acquainted with the reality of novel-writing as a more-often-than-not-unpleasant business. Sure. But sometimes I forget how forcefully we writers kick and scream against the pressure of the Novel Gods. How much we wail. (If you are in fact unaccustomed to how much authors wail, start following this blog. You'll get the idea inside of ten minutes.) How much we despair. How truly terrible -- and I mean that, in every possible sense of the word -- the business is at times. Sometimes, in the cozy warmth of little publications here and there and meeting other folk of the writerly tribe, it is possible to forget how awful the act of writing can be.
Today I almost dissolved into a snot-ridden mess at the computer. I don't know what started it, but suddenly I was ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that my time was up. That it had in fact never started, that the train would simultaneously never arrive and yet (in an astounding display of physics) had already managed to disappear in a puff of tired clichés and lackluster verbs. Done. I was finished. FINISHED AS A WRITER, BY GOD. It was just that simple.
Sometimes you want to say to the Leafs: guys, give it up and golf 365 days a year. And sometimes you want to say to yourself: dude, put the dreams away and start being useful. You are No Good. You've had Extraordinary Luck, but your period of sunshine is over and now it's time to Get Real. You will never Be Anything. You will never Write Anything. Your new novel Stinks. You are Garbage. You are Garbage enough that you feel the need to capitalize everything, thereby adding Weight and Gravitas to the pithy little worries in your pithy little life.
Etc.
Of course, soon enough Twitter (because I am incapable, it would seem, of soldiering through these bouts alone, which is another thing to feel guilty about, but whatever) came to the rescue. I tell myself: it's just a draft, and genius can come later, said one friend. Don't give up. Tell your inner critic to shut up and just keep going, said another.
Read something amazing and aspire, said one more. And when I gloomily shot back with, But what if you read something and you just think, "Why even bother?", said friend gave me exactly the tough love answer required.
That's wanton self-destruction. Stop it.
Indeed. Stop it, Amanda. So you're afraid of that niggling "what if". So what? You do not, as dear Sugar once said, get to decide all that much about your work apart from the actual working of it. You don't get to have control over anything except those words that you put down. Who thinks "why bother"? Givers-up, that's who. You KNOW that. So the mean reds have descended. So what? You know what you're afraid of -- you're afraid that All 'Twill Be in Vain. But what does that mean, exactly? Sure, you want to be a successful writer. One day. Maybe. If the gods are kind. But you also want to be a good writer, even more than you want to be a successful one. (And while we're at it, what exactly does "successful" mean, anyhow?) And you're slogging through these moments of unease and icky self-pity and doubt and horribleness precisely so that you can be a bad writer, and learn from there how to be a good one.
As it happens, that friend of yours so ready with the tough love also had this wisdom to say: most sports teams need to spend a certain amount of time being bad before they can be any good. They need to start the team from the ground up, and grow together as a unit. (This was, by the way, a separate conversation, but lo and behold, it fits! AND SO I'M PUTTING IT IN.) The Leafs haven't done this. The franchise is too much of a machine -- they'll sell the arena out anyway, win or lose, so why bother putting in the extra time and effort? Why bother going through the slog? Except that you don't build a winning team that way. That's not how it happens.
Okay, so the metaphor isn't perfect. I'm not talking about winning. Obviously. But how easy, truly, to forget that small fact of the matter: we're always spending time being bad, we writers. You slog through the angsty poetry of your teenage years in the hopes that one day you'll finally start to understand how words go together. You put in the time. You get better. And as you get better, you realize that you'll never actually put those angsty terrible words, or those clichés, or those purple phrases aside, not quite. You weed them out, sure, but drafting will forever be the process.
I do know what started the emotional dissolve today, actually. I almost-dissolved because I was working on a scene and trying to think of exciting verbs and nothing -- absolutely nothing -- was coming to mind. My verbs were dull. My words were all dull. It was but a short jump from that trembling place to the Horrible Pit of ALL OF MY WRITING IS DULL, AND WILL NEVER GO ANYWHERE, SOB SOB.
But it's just a draft. That's all it is. I'm not under deadline. I'm not about to shoot this off to my agent. (Thank the fiery gods for that.) It. Is. Just. A. Draft. Like my friend said: the genius can come later. Besides -- you want to be a good writer, yes, but even more than that, even more than wanting to be a good AND successful writer, Amanda, you want to be someone who likes what she does at the end of the day. It's that simple. You love words. You choose, day in and out, to sit down at your computer with your cup of tea because that's exactly how you want to spend your day. You have your Ann-Marie moments of horrible pain, sure. But sometimes you still find it lovely. And isn't that a lucky thing? Think of all the people the world over who don't get to do what they love. Think of that.
So I "stoppited" and kept on writing and repeated the genius mantra out loud, while at work. (Yes. My Real Life workplace affords me time and space to do my own writing. I've laid many a burnt vegetable offering at the altar of the Writing Gods to swing that deal, let me tell you. It also had a lot to do with sheer dumb luck.) And eventually the Mean Reds went away, and I kept on writing, and I tried to worry less about finding exciting words, and then a couple of hours or so later I came across this quote, from this post by Chuck Wendig, and now the serendipitous nature of the day's unfolding is complete, and I can bid you all good night.
Finding the perfect word is as likely as finding a downy-soft unicorn with a pearlescent horn riding a skateboard made from the bones of your many enemies. Get shut of this notion. The perfect is the enemy of the good. For every sentence and every story you have a plethora of right words. Find a good word. Seek a strong word. But the hunt for a perfect word will drive you into a wide-eyed froth.
So there, folks. So there.
Maybe this time is up, but if it is--it can just be the start of another kind of time.
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