A Writer's Notebook, Day Eight-Hundred-And--Forty-Seven

 As I said last night, it terrifies me to be in my current situation, as I cannot help but feel a certain despondency, a fear that I will never reach any kind of real success in my career as a writer.  I do not know how I can change this, and I am not speaking of the external circumstances, but my experience of those circumstances.  If I were ever to accept the idea of my writing as a thing I am doing solely for its own sake, as is often suggested as a cure for the kind of woes I am facing, it would be a sign that I had been defeated on some level that is beyond my current comprehension.  That is not to say that I do not respect writers or artists with that attitude, as I know many who have that kind of perspective who are very talented and authentic in their work, but for me, it would mark my choosing to give up on communicating, instead choosing to just write things for myself and my own amusement, essentially journals or worse.  I would not be a writer in the way I conceive of myself as a writer, but would be someone who had quit even trying.  I do not want to become that kind of bitter, self-destructive person.  I also do not want to become a person who is convinced I have been wronged.  I know I already feel that to some extent, and I do believe that I am justified in some of those beliefs, but it is not a good thing, and I want to change it.  I don't know how to make any of this different.  I have been working and getting nowhere, and I am not willing to quit, and not able to live with this kind of failure.  I have to find a solution, but it feels as if any real change is outside my control, and as such is just not going to happen.  That's how it feels, and I can't continue on this way.  I need a real solution, a way forward.  I am afraid, as I have said already, and I do not know what it will mean if things remain as they are for much longer.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Writer's Notebook, Day Two-Hundred-And-Fifty

Each of the three pieces I wrote today was a bit of a struggle to get going, if I am honest.  That happens, as I have mentioned, and my answer is generally to just wait it out, and the results vary.  A lot of the time, if I am really stuck, I might try to force something out, often it winds up being a bit meta, with me writing about being stuck without much in terms of inspiration, and it feels a bit like I am working scales in a way.  All the aesthetic decisions are there, they just don't always have a lot of purpose behind them, and that is fine in that context.  Essentially, I am just forcing myself to do the work, and getting it done, and I am showing myself that I can and will do it even if inspiration never strikes.  This can often take pressure off, and that lack of pressure opens up creative thinking and inspiration. Now, that is a fine thing for me to do, and I am likely to use that approach again many times in the future, but today I felt that I want...
Read more

Le Guin, Steering The Craft, Chapter Five: Adjectives and Adverbs (Exercise Five, Chastity)

A note of apology for my lateness with this.  I had expected to have time earlier in the day, but it was not to be, alas.  Anyhow, I am still a bit nervous about this exercise, though it is clearly of significant import to Le Guin, as she points out that it is the only exercise that she has given to all of her workshops.  That, of course, does not alter my feelings about it, excepting that I am aware of it as something valuable and worth doing, so the fact that it is a bit daunting might well be seen, through that light, as a promise of reward, perhaps.  The more difficult the task, the more one has to gain, at least by some logic... Exercise Five: Chastity Mr. Torino was in charge.  He had his way.  It was the way.  Desktops are clean.  Nothing but work.  No pictures: not your kids; not your girl or wife; not (as Allen recounted) your car.   None of that.  No plants.  No cartoons.  That is for home, this is work....
Read more

A Writer's Notebook, Two-Thousand-And-Fifty-Nine

I have been thinking about how I can discuss certain aspects of my poetry and the choices I make as a writer.  In particular, I tend to write without as much reliance on sensory details and descriptions, instead choosing more abstract depictions.  This is something that I know many writers would call an odd choice, as specificity seems inherently to demand the application of detail, but I tend to be a bit hesitant about relying on depictions that utilize the senses, as I find that approach somewhat problematic.  For one thing, sensory description is always going to be less than universal, and not only because of the reality that there are individuals who lack one or more sense.  In many ways, for me, the deeper problem is one related to language itself.  Our use of language creates our experiences in a very real way, though I can't necessarily offer a full explanation of what I mean by that right here, but using a word for an object bestows qualities on it....
Read more