(no subject)
Mar. 4th, 2004 04:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hafoc
I'd like to apologize for the diatribe I posted here last time. It was silly and I've deleted it.
However, it did make me think. I have some decisions I need to make.
This is not a cry for help, or an angst session, or a call for messages of empty praise, encouragement, or sympathy. I'm dead serious about this. I'm telling you how things are, no more, no less.
I'm staying home this weekend, alone, to meditate and pray and try to decide one important question. Should I give up writing? That I can even ask myself this question brings tears to my eyes, and yet when I think of a future without writing in it, my heart lifts. It's the strangest thing.
I wrote that diatribe the other day, and I enjoyed writing it. It was fun. Thinking about that, I realized something sickening. That diatribe, and a few other entries here on this journal, are THE ONLY FUN I HAVE HAD WRITING IN NEARLY TWO YEARS.
I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of editing to try to meet the standards of people who aren't going to look at what I write anyway. I'm sick of a system where it is considered Professional to sit quietly without complaining for two and a half years-- which I did-- waiting for frickin' Big Books to take a look at my novel, just to receive a bad photocopy of a bad photocopy of an unsigned rejection slip. And where, if I complain that such a long delay (during which I can't send the book to any other publisher, you understand, because that would be Unprofessional) editors who counsel me not to take rejections personally will take MY words personally, label me as Unprofessional, and blackball me for life. Or so they hint. "The editors are likely to see your comments on any public forum, you know, and they DO talk to each other."
I am tired of trying to work with a system where anything at all that benefits the big publishing company is Professional, and is to be endured silently but never taken personally. While at the same time anything that benefits me is Unprofessional, to be taken personally against me, and to be complained of publicly and bitterly.
Hell, I can't even have any fun when I GIVE my work away. I wrote a short story for a convention book. You know what I got for it? Nothing.
No money, of course. But I didn't expect money. What I DID expect was the traditional two free copies of the con book, and a thank-you note. What I got was.. nothing. No copies of the con book. No thank-you. They didn't even bother to notify me they were actually going to print the bloody thing. I just got there, and there it was. Oh, yeah, I guess it's gratifying to think that one or two of the thousand-odd people who got those books might have stumbled across my story and read it while they were looking at all the pretty pictures. But it wasn't worth the grief of having to have a friend track down the con book maven to find the story submission guidelines. (They weren't published anywhere, which should have told me these people didn't really want any stories at all.) And then to discover that they valued my work so little that even if they accepted it, they wouldn't bother to tell me.
So I've been working hard, sacrificing my spare time, my fun, my money, for years now, and for nothing. Not even courtesy. What's perhaps worst is not knowing whether there is any point in continuing. Perhaps my work just sucks. Oh, I know, some of those who read this, if anybody does, have read my stories and told me they were good. But I twisted your arms to get you to do it. You don't have to twist anybody's arms to get them to read a GOOD book.
I think my writing is pretty good. Mommy thinks I'm a genius. But friends, family, and the author's own opinion are no damned good as guides to whether the work has any real merit.
No, the only way I can ever know if I'm good is to sell something to some disinterested professional. Until then, I don't know, and if (as is likely) I never do publish anything I really care about, I'll go to my grave without knowing.
Giving up writing would not be an easy choice. I consider the stories I give out to be my only real value in this overpopulated world. And yet I think I would be happier and better off if I could just print that one final copy of my stories, stuff it in my darkest file drawer, and forget about it forever.
Because going on is bringing me no pleasure. It's removing any trace of a social life. And it's doing one more thing; it's making me tiresome to you, my friends. And that is one thing I will not and can not allow.
However, it did make me think. I have some decisions I need to make.
This is not a cry for help, or an angst session, or a call for messages of empty praise, encouragement, or sympathy. I'm dead serious about this. I'm telling you how things are, no more, no less.
I'm staying home this weekend, alone, to meditate and pray and try to decide one important question. Should I give up writing? That I can even ask myself this question brings tears to my eyes, and yet when I think of a future without writing in it, my heart lifts. It's the strangest thing.
I wrote that diatribe the other day, and I enjoyed writing it. It was fun. Thinking about that, I realized something sickening. That diatribe, and a few other entries here on this journal, are THE ONLY FUN I HAVE HAD WRITING IN NEARLY TWO YEARS.
I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of editing to try to meet the standards of people who aren't going to look at what I write anyway. I'm sick of a system where it is considered Professional to sit quietly without complaining for two and a half years-- which I did-- waiting for frickin' Big Books to take a look at my novel, just to receive a bad photocopy of a bad photocopy of an unsigned rejection slip. And where, if I complain that such a long delay (during which I can't send the book to any other publisher, you understand, because that would be Unprofessional) editors who counsel me not to take rejections personally will take MY words personally, label me as Unprofessional, and blackball me for life. Or so they hint. "The editors are likely to see your comments on any public forum, you know, and they DO talk to each other."
I am tired of trying to work with a system where anything at all that benefits the big publishing company is Professional, and is to be endured silently but never taken personally. While at the same time anything that benefits me is Unprofessional, to be taken personally against me, and to be complained of publicly and bitterly.
Hell, I can't even have any fun when I GIVE my work away. I wrote a short story for a convention book. You know what I got for it? Nothing.
No money, of course. But I didn't expect money. What I DID expect was the traditional two free copies of the con book, and a thank-you note. What I got was.. nothing. No copies of the con book. No thank-you. They didn't even bother to notify me they were actually going to print the bloody thing. I just got there, and there it was. Oh, yeah, I guess it's gratifying to think that one or two of the thousand-odd people who got those books might have stumbled across my story and read it while they were looking at all the pretty pictures. But it wasn't worth the grief of having to have a friend track down the con book maven to find the story submission guidelines. (They weren't published anywhere, which should have told me these people didn't really want any stories at all.) And then to discover that they valued my work so little that even if they accepted it, they wouldn't bother to tell me.
So I've been working hard, sacrificing my spare time, my fun, my money, for years now, and for nothing. Not even courtesy. What's perhaps worst is not knowing whether there is any point in continuing. Perhaps my work just sucks. Oh, I know, some of those who read this, if anybody does, have read my stories and told me they were good. But I twisted your arms to get you to do it. You don't have to twist anybody's arms to get them to read a GOOD book.
I think my writing is pretty good. Mommy thinks I'm a genius. But friends, family, and the author's own opinion are no damned good as guides to whether the work has any real merit.
No, the only way I can ever know if I'm good is to sell something to some disinterested professional. Until then, I don't know, and if (as is likely) I never do publish anything I really care about, I'll go to my grave without knowing.
Giving up writing would not be an easy choice. I consider the stories I give out to be my only real value in this overpopulated world. And yet I think I would be happier and better off if I could just print that one final copy of my stories, stuff it in my darkest file drawer, and forget about it forever.
Because going on is bringing me no pleasure. It's removing any trace of a social life. And it's doing one more thing; it's making me tiresome to you, my friends. And that is one thing I will not and can not allow.
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-04 10:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-05 08:35 am (UTC)if something is no longer fun for you to do, then don't do it. Take a break and move on to another activity for a while. Know that you are appreciated no matter what!
no subject
Date: 2004-03-05 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-03-08 09:08 am (UTC)Isn't it ironic that you've now deleted -- gone, without a trace (well, unless you saved the LJ comment notification e-mails or someone has it in their browser cache) -- what, by your admission, is one of the only things you've had fun writing in two years?
That admission surprised me to read. It also saddens me. If you're not making money with your writing (not that that is necessarily its primary value, but that seems to be one of your goals), you should at least be having fun with it. If you're not having fun ... well, as much as I and your other admirers here enjoy the fruits of your labor, maybe it is time to stop and ask yourself why; and how you can change that.
We're not worker ants -- our value is determined not only by our worth to the colony, but also our value to ourselves. Don't sacrifice yourself for the anthill out of some sense of duty to it. The anthill doesn't care. Hell, not even Stephen freakin' King is going to get so much as a national day of mourning when he passes on.
I think your other respondents' suggestion of a break is a good one. At least, take a day or two off and figure out what you do want out of your craft. And then get back to writing the things that bring a smile to your face.
... And don't delete them. I may have taken your rant the wrong way, but I certainly didn't intend for it to vanish into the aether. You made many good points and the world is the poorer for them being gone.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-08 06:10 pm (UTC)But.. that "gone without a trace" thing.. Now really. A rant, and not especially good one at that? It's nothing to mourn.
I don't suppose you'd believe how much throw-away writing I do. Little verses (I don't dare call them poems) I send in email to people, little stories I wrote for one or two people, sent, didn't keep copies of. Volume after volume of essays on the great political issues of the day, or the weather, or the coyote I saw in the back yard, or on which fountain pen works best with which brand of ink, on how badly the Lions and Tigers suck this year.. written, finished, tossed in a big plastic box I have in the garage, the one with HISTORY scribbled across the top. Just in case, some day a century from now, somebody might be interested in such day-to-day trivia. Geez-o-petes, half or more of what I write is throw-away stuff, things I did just for the pure aesthetic pleasure of a pen point sliding across a sheet of paper. It's no loss, I assure you.
no subject
Date: 2004-03-10 11:18 am (UTC)