Letters to the Editor
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Cary: your therapist was too kind
We hate your writing, too. Listen to the voices in your head--the ones that are telling you to stop writing.
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Welcome to the club
As a published author with over 100 articles (I have lost count) and five books, I say “welcome to the club.” Now get started on your second book.
Seriously, I am never satisfied with any of my books or articles, but deadlines need to be met if I want to eat. So I just promse myself that my book will be better than than the preceding.
Go out tonight and have a great time. Tomorrow morning, start working.
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Turn off KFKD Radio
Writer Anne Lamott's already been there, and done that as far as this issue is concerned.
She has an excellent description of K-FUCKED radio, the radio station in the head of nearly every writer...that 24 hour a day radio station in our heads that tells us that every word we write is drivel, and we're terrible at writing, and so on...
And she tells you how to turn it off.
So while you're buying the other book, get a copy of Lamott's book "Bird By Bird" ASAP.
BTW, it's well done, and written before she went all born-again balmy...
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What's the name of the book?
Really, I'd like to know.
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This is what Salon is coming to?
Wah Wah Wah! I'm so talented and dissatisfied. Can someone stroke my ego and change my diaper?
Glad to see Salon is sticking to hard-hitting political critique and thought-provoking, challenging questions of personal development. Come on, Cary, you're better than this!
Ru
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Why????
..... because it's your job, that's why. Your job is to write for others to enjoy or admire. So sit back, appreciate your success, and if you want to read for pleasure, read someone else's stuff. That's how it works.
Now, I don't wish to be rude, but I think you should think twice before ever raising this concern with anyone else. It could start to look a little like a narcissistic craving for attention and approval.
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Do you really hate your own writing?
Maybe you are simply making a preemptive strike by being hard on yourselves before someone else does it. If so, realize that there will always be someone who will hard on you no matter how good you are. Don't take it personally, just think, fuck 'em. Did you learn to be meek and accept lots of criticism as a child? Well, it's over now, try to adjust. You are now your own person.
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The Writer Laws of Nature
LW, give it 10 years and you will look at your first book and say, "Man, I was so brilliant then, what happened to me? Why can't I write anymore?"
It's just one of those Writer Laws of Nature.
Listen, you can't have been TOO much of a perfectionist because you finished the thing.
And, the only way to quiet the critical voice is to write another book, and another one and another one. Put so many of them out there that you will forget the little things that bug you about each one. Put so many of them out there that their flaws will cancel each other out. Put so many of them out there that you will learn that every book has its sweet spots and its rough patches, and chances are critics will point them out to you and you will disagree with everything they say.
Put so many of them out there that you will learn to keep your focus forward and not backward. Let the old stuff go. Face that new blank page.
Yours in solidarity,
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Bukowski said...
..."As the spirit wanes, the form appears."
That means that as you part from the spirit that drives
you to write, you become caught up in matters of form.
Look past all those tangly words, and make sure the
spirit's nice and hot. That's all that matters.
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me too
I can empathize. I think a lot of writers suffer from perfectionism, including me. I won't quote Anne Lamott here, since I've seen the reaction to her work, but I highly recommend taking a look at the chapter titled "Perfectionism" in her writing memoir "Bird by Bird."
I, too, have a negative little voice. I'm not sure when it was installed, but it seems to have always been there. Lately, it's gotten better, but it took a lot of actively challenging the voice. Now when I hear, "You're weird," or "You'll never write a decent sentence," I tell it to shut up. Or I say, "So what?"
Usually the voice has no comeback. But it took a long while to get to this point. Graduating college, which was a hotbed of perfectionism, also helped.
I've also been a journalist, and I found it helpful in overcoming perfectionism. Your editor tends not to care so much if all the commas are in place and it's Pulitzer Prize quality as long as it's turned in by the deadline.
This probably sounds gimmicky, but I hope you find something that works for you. Good luck.
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Don't worry about the book...
Most likely it will be quickly forgotten - if it's not already. That little voice in your head is the voice of truth - telling you that your work is inconsequential and unimportant - but you already know this. On my computer I have hundreds of pages of manuscript - a few novels, a bunch of short stories, a pile of outlined ideas. I won't do anything with this work because I know it sucks. I know this because I've read great literature and I know my work is not close to that kind of stuff - and you know this is true about your own work, but you went and got published and got paid - and that's cool - far better than i've done, but leave it at that: cash your check, feed your family and keep writing, but don't expect praise because it won't happen. And don't listen to Cary: we've all read his overblown and purple prose and we all know if he could really write he'd be writing - not doing sexless Dan Savage at a free website that just barely stays afloat. I hate to sound mean, but I love good writing and hate how it's a cheap commodity puked out by grad students who really have nothing to say: anyone read David Foster Wallace recently? Great craftsman with no plotline read by few and destined to be left behind by history.