Tuesday, November 18, 2008

having a wannabe writer meltdown


I've long feared that my sensibilities and skills are too immature....
and while I do feel that I can improve my skills, I'm concerned about my sensibilities. Or rather my ability to convey them. I think perhaps my perspective is simple, or at least my image/concept to words process is. It goes in meaningful, I feel it fully, but it comes out simple, standard, ordinary, in lowest common denominator form. (My crayons straight out of the box. Metaphors, ideas, words, well known, worn.)
I am not concerned so much about changing the in-waves stuff, it will take time, but I believe I will do it/can do it. The trouble is, that example is just the one that I can see. The whole thing is probably like that, in ways that I don't see or know, because it is just the way that I am (made).
I'm not striving for high art, not for something complex; I decided a long time ago, I mean to by writing to my own level, not attempting anything lofty. But still it shocked me to find my writing so immature.
I'm not giving up, just going to tumble all the way down, and taste the dirt a bit, before I get myself back up.
Because the parts that I don't write, the parts that just come to me...well I love those parts. I owe them more than just connecting them together with garbage (plastic bags and the like, not composting). And I guess I owe it to myself to ask more of myself. (To try. And try..and try...and try.)
But I know I will get, I can go, only so far, I wont be changing my core perspective, my way of seeing; I'll just be tweaking my ability to share it. I'm only going for the change of one note lower in pitch. (the sound of one note deeper).

There are so many different things one has to face when writing; (ironic for me here) complex issues arriving from the simple stringing of words on a page.
(combinations of letters vexing, hexing; a curse of self-doubt, I cast on myself again and again.)
Deconstructing a paragraph; deconstructing me.
Sitting alone in a room, asking myself questions all the time (all the time, cliche, no doubt, oops, another). And it looks like I don't move at all, I look fixed and unchanged over time, yet how I answer each and every question, changes me.
Forms me.
There is a world contained in each question. Can I do this? Is this worthwhile? Why am I spending my time this way? Do I have a worthwhile perspective? Is it meaningful; am I meaningful? How do I see the world? Is anyone interested in seeing the world through my eyes (through my character's)? Am I the same or different than? What do I believe?
It might seem sacrilegous to say so, but it reminds me of believing in God, the continual questions of faith one goes through when trying to write a novel. And in what one asks of herself, in always trying to be good, always trying to be better than she is, or believes herself to naturally be. In asking oneself what is truly possible, what is reasonable, logical to believe, and then believing in what seems extraordinary instead because somehow it is more natural.

because somehow there is a greater truth tucked into the impossible.

3 comments:

strugglingwriter said...

This is a very easy thing to say and I know it is difficult. However, being in a writing critique group would help with some of this stuff.

They see stuff in my writing I would never see.

It's hard to find a group, and it isn't required. However, it might help.

PS I have felt all the things you say about my writing.

Vesper said...

simple, standard, ordinary, in lowest common denominator form.

I cannot agree with this, judging by what I can read on your blog.

Taffiny said...

Paul,

I know you're right. I'm currently trying to blackmail Bob into reading it; he plods along so slowly! I've told him I should join a writing group, but he would need to be home that night to watch our son; and he wouldn't commit to that (I think work would let him do it though, so I am going to look around for one.)

PS I hate feeling those things.



Vesper,

Thanks. :)

I hope not, I'm just not sure. I'm in the mood today to give myself some credit/encouragement, so I will assume a mix, and say it isn't all so.