#writerdom

[themuseverse]

The Unfortunate Domestication of Wild Writerdom

Prior to domestication, writers command a distinct self with particularities and talents. Somewhere along this blissful path, their souls are squashed by the Inevitable Plague of the Life Crisis. The realization of what one should be dawns. Doubt grows and all sorts of horrifying notions fill the weakened mind. Writers ought to do such and such, an invisible creature formed of Everybody’s Opinions says. Avoid this mistake! Don’t write in this format! Don’t write in such and such POV!

Rules.

Art is not rules. Replicating the success of others holds you back. To be the best writer you can be, you must be wholly yourself.

Stop listening to People.

People aren’t you.

I used to think some people were “born” creative. That certain personalities were inherently more creative than others. True creatives possessed the ability to create concretely on the fly. I was slow. I should not have been creative. My ideas were not original. I was not intuitive.

That was before I knew myself. Before I understood I absorb pieces of information from millions of places and transform them into something cohesive; not a story so much as a feeling. Fuzzy at first but mutating into something new. Once epiphany struck, I learned to trust my process and appreciate the way I created. Then I loved writing because I did not have to pretend or follow someone else’s model of creation.

Turn off the advice. Listen to your inner self. In the silence, you will hear a whisper.

Listen.

[distractingredirection-blog]

so I definitely didn’t even want to write today, but I ended up writing 2k17 words in like 30 minutes ^-^

[sarahreesbrennan]

I love your characters a whole lot, especially Mae. You should never worry that people won't read your books! But I do think that you should have a bigger fanbase, your books are just as good as those of Cassie and Holly! :)

FRIENDSHIP & WRITERDOM!

I still do worry, but thank you very much. ;) And now... in thanks... I will transform my answer into a strange mini-essay? (I don't know, it just happened.)

Thank you very much for the kind words! I would certainly super love to be popular (because that means... a lot of people would read my books, not because then I'd be prom queen ;)) but I don't really compare myself to my friends.

Not that you said I did! You were lovely, Lannista, and are perfect 2 me!

But your most lovely ask reminded me that I'd seen stuff about writer friends who people said secretly hated each other, or were jealous of each other, or were cliquey or some such thing, and I wanted to talk a little about that and so RAN AWAY WITH YOUR ASK TO STRANGE PLACES.

Writers being friends with each other is something that has happened pretty much for hundreds of years.

C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were friends and had a writerly group called the Inklings in which people sat around at the pub and yelled 'no more freaking dwarves GOD.'

Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins were friends who went tromping through the mountains together and occasionally when one was sick the other would offer to write his stuff for him! They had matchy beards.

Those beards were their BFF charms!

Actually Chuck Dickens loved to throw ragers for Artistes and would sit around mixing cocktails with one hand and writing Tale of Two Cities with the other. (I pick Tale of Two Cities because it is my fave.) Then other writers would stagger in drunk and talk to him.

EDGAR ALLAN POE: What the dickens!

CHARLES DICKENS: I wish people would quit saying that.

EDGAR ALLAN POE: But seriously man there's a raven in your library?

CHARLES DICKENS: That is my pet raven! He is called Grip.

EDGAR ALLAN POE: I'm going to write a poem about him!

YEARS OF LITERARY ANALYSIS: never talk about how very literal Edgar Allan Poe's poem 'The Raven' actually was. ('No really, it was Charles Dickens's raven, it was just a poem about his bird, if he'd had a dog called Spot maybe it would have gone 'quoth the beagle "Nevermore".')

Quoth the raven: Property of Charles Dickens.

Like most people with friends, I love my friends. I am happy when they are happy. I am beyond delighted when they are successful and super disappointed when they are not. I am thinking of a list of dozens of people who I think are reallio trulio wonderful and I want nothing but the best for them, and I believe that is what they want for me. I remember when Cassie's first book City of Bones hit the New York Times bestseller list and I was so happy I screeched 'CASSIE HIT THE LIST!' like a howler monkey and threw a sofa cushion with force at my roommate's head.

(I didn't say I express my affection in appropriate ways.)

This is not to say I am a gloriously perfect, shining angel, who never bears ill feeling towards anybody. Every now and then I will pick a Nemesis. An author whose book I super didn't like, which got a fantastic cover and amazing marketing money which left other books I did love in trouble. An author who slagged me off on the internet. (People, it is called the world wide web for a reason, what are you doing.) That kind of thing. I will have a Nemesis for a while, and hope that people would like my books more than theirs.

... Then I will forget about my Nemesis and wander off, or switch Nemeses. I'm a fickle creature.

One of my friends has never been a Nemesis--Nemeses have to be people I've never met! I have never done anything to a Nemesis, never even spoken ill of them anywhere, never talked of them at all. This is probably good, as quite often the Nemesis has turned out to be quite lovely, and then my face is red.

Plus every Nemesis I've ever had has beaten me sales-wise, so it's probably bad karma to even have a secret nemesis. ;) Nevertheless, that's how I roll.

Competition or envy between friends--look, it happens sometimes, sure, sometimes you murder your friends and wander around wearing their tiny shrunken heads as a belt (not me, I've never done that, I'm just... sure it has happened... occasionally...).

But the image of women as competing over jobs or dudes or I don't know, shoes, or being secretly mean or jealous, is ridiculous to me, thinking of all the kind, supportive, talented communities of women I've been in and am currently in.

And... that's all. SO SORRY FOR THIS COMPLETE TANGENT. Thank you for the compliments very much... and the love for one of my fictional ladies. ;)

[thedevilsnightcap]

I have always wanted to use a typewriter. I think it's probably a rite of passage to writerdom anyway. Someday.