Betsy - I so relate to the writing struggle, having been doing it so many, many years. I've come so close a number of times, but just never get there. And that I write so slow, I find my emotional state and growth (or decline) mismatches the story. I'm at the point where I do not want to be traditionally published any more. After being with two very established and successful literary agents for years, I'm tired of trying (and I acknowledge my lack of success is my fault, not theirs). But I still have to do this thing. "Am I the real deal? . . ." I don't care anymore, especially in this current publishing environment. Everything is "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!" "someone, please look at me". Of course I want to be read, but I want to write what is true to me, or how I see it, and realize I maybe wrong . . . and do it with high craft (or what I think is high craft). My family and friends do not like my writing, only the occasional stranger, the reader who doesn't know me. And sometimes I think, what the hell did these two agents see to keep me on so long? But I keep at it and love it and hate it, lazy, distracted bastard that I am. It's probably more a narcissistic delusion to keep the emptiness off - something I think I do well and have control over. Maybe, in part, pathological. Herman Melville is my hero and muse. His work was finally read extensively, just not in his lifetime; he didn't know what he would become and isn't around to enjoy it . . . And "Yes", the times and circumstances makes my writing feel vain and silly and stupid. I guess we always think the person that we are at the moment matters more than who we were - it must. I'm just a cranky old guy now.
Well - your post touched something in me as this is the most I've ever responded to an article. Don't know if I answered your question, but it got me thinking. As a side note, we're going back home for a visit in Portsmouth and Melvin Village at the end of May - an automatic decompression once back home. Be well.
I don't want to write about work, I want to write about writing. I've been sick since April 1 with a kidney infection, still recovering. For several days, I had a fever. During that time, I often lay awake, but too sick to get up. I wrote haiku in my head. I went over and over them so I would remember them and write them down when I was able to do so. The fever is over, but I can't yet recall those haiku. I trust they will return one day. Meanwhile, I have been able to write a couple of poems. My other writing is on hold. In my life I have written for money (as a journalist) and when I was writing for money somehow I always got the job done, and done on time. Without a paycheck, the writing takes longer, seems more "precious," but I carry on. There was a time in my life when I decided to "quit" writing. I took up gardening. Thank goodness for that time, because now I have both: writing AND gardening. I love watching life arise from the dirt, and flowers come into bloom.
I try to think of my writing like eating. I eat because I want to stay alive and I aim for well-being, besides the simply being alive bit. Somedays I grab what's easy--yogurt, fruit, crackers. It's not cooking, just sustenance. Other times I'm planning and prepping, every bite an elaborate construction of idea meets craving meets I just want to make this recipe, almost as if the eating is a second thought. Somedays I dream of walking into a store and buying anything I want to eat, other days I'm enamored with a tender lettuce leaf from my tiny garden, the strawberry from the plant I rustled from the compost heap of that fabulous estate where I worked as a gardener: I wrote every morning those two years, stirring my thoughts into what I hoped was something useful or enticing for whomever stumbled on it, serving it up on a blog nobody, save my sister, ever read. I shopped at a food bank, but I wrote and wrote and wrote. And here I am, we are, right? Write. Write as if your life depends on it Elizabeth. Everything we do, noticing the way steam curls off a skillet or how a word lifts itself from the page, and that damn knife blade called how we spend our time, is shaping the next words we'll write.
Betsy - I so relate to the writing struggle, having been doing it so many, many years. I've come so close a number of times, but just never get there. And that I write so slow, I find my emotional state and growth (or decline) mismatches the story. I'm at the point where I do not want to be traditionally published any more. After being with two very established and successful literary agents for years, I'm tired of trying (and I acknowledge my lack of success is my fault, not theirs). But I still have to do this thing. "Am I the real deal? . . ." I don't care anymore, especially in this current publishing environment. Everything is "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!" "someone, please look at me". Of course I want to be read, but I want to write what is true to me, or how I see it, and realize I maybe wrong . . . and do it with high craft (or what I think is high craft). My family and friends do not like my writing, only the occasional stranger, the reader who doesn't know me. And sometimes I think, what the hell did these two agents see to keep me on so long? But I keep at it and love it and hate it, lazy, distracted bastard that I am. It's probably more a narcissistic delusion to keep the emptiness off - something I think I do well and have control over. Maybe, in part, pathological. Herman Melville is my hero and muse. His work was finally read extensively, just not in his lifetime; he didn't know what he would become and isn't around to enjoy it . . . And "Yes", the times and circumstances makes my writing feel vain and silly and stupid. I guess we always think the person that we are at the moment matters more than who we were - it must. I'm just a cranky old guy now.
Well - your post touched something in me as this is the most I've ever responded to an article. Don't know if I answered your question, but it got me thinking. As a side note, we're going back home for a visit in Portsmouth and Melvin Village at the end of May - an automatic decompression once back home. Be well.
I don't want to write about work, I want to write about writing. I've been sick since April 1 with a kidney infection, still recovering. For several days, I had a fever. During that time, I often lay awake, but too sick to get up. I wrote haiku in my head. I went over and over them so I would remember them and write them down when I was able to do so. The fever is over, but I can't yet recall those haiku. I trust they will return one day. Meanwhile, I have been able to write a couple of poems. My other writing is on hold. In my life I have written for money (as a journalist) and when I was writing for money somehow I always got the job done, and done on time. Without a paycheck, the writing takes longer, seems more "precious," but I carry on. There was a time in my life when I decided to "quit" writing. I took up gardening. Thank goodness for that time, because now I have both: writing AND gardening. I love watching life arise from the dirt, and flowers come into bloom.
I try to think of my writing like eating. I eat because I want to stay alive and I aim for well-being, besides the simply being alive bit. Somedays I grab what's easy--yogurt, fruit, crackers. It's not cooking, just sustenance. Other times I'm planning and prepping, every bite an elaborate construction of idea meets craving meets I just want to make this recipe, almost as if the eating is a second thought. Somedays I dream of walking into a store and buying anything I want to eat, other days I'm enamored with a tender lettuce leaf from my tiny garden, the strawberry from the plant I rustled from the compost heap of that fabulous estate where I worked as a gardener: I wrote every morning those two years, stirring my thoughts into what I hoped was something useful or enticing for whomever stumbled on it, serving it up on a blog nobody, save my sister, ever read. I shopped at a food bank, but I wrote and wrote and wrote. And here I am, we are, right? Write. Write as if your life depends on it Elizabeth. Everything we do, noticing the way steam curls off a skillet or how a word lifts itself from the page, and that damn knife blade called how we spend our time, is shaping the next words we'll write.