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silveradept[Welcome back to December Days. This year, thanks to a suggestion from alexseanchai, I'm writing about writing. Suggestions for topics are most definitely welcome! There's still a lot of space to cover.]
Let me say this to start: You are already good enough to write.
You are already good enough to write.
(Or draw, or vid, or podcast, or whatever other creative endeavor you have in mind.)
There is no secret gene or biological superpower or Applied Phlebotinum that means some people are better predisposed to the act of writing in their very core and some people are just never going to be good enough. If that were the truth, the publishing industry would have long since found the link and exploited it appropriately. Instead, much like the movie and television industry, publishing is suffering a major inability to believe that diverse audiences would buy works written by diverse authors containing diverse characters. Even with the statistics staring them in the face.
So, no, there's no magic involved that bars bars some people from doing writing because they will somehow physically be unable to do anything well.
Who am I to make such a claim? Well, one in a very long string of writers who have said much the same thing when asked about their inhuman creativity (or ability to put out material), for the most part.
Also, however, I'm a published author of a few different articles and pieces, a few of which I have been paid for, so yes, that means I've crossed the professional barrier, even if most of the writing I do is for fun and not profit. For Reasons (that will probably be explored as we go). And no, I haven't sold a novel yet, but I'm not actually interested in doing that right now, so it's hard to sell a thing you're not actually trying to write.
If that doesn't sway you, then I can say that, over the course of the last three years, the words that I can easily count have been over one hundred thousand for each year, and about half of that or so is on a single series of works, going bit by bit. That way counting doesn't include anything here, by the way, so fudge whatever additional wordcount seems appropriate for the last couple years of Dreamwidth posts. So at least two NaNovels, spread out over the course of the year, writing-wise, for at least the past three years. That's a fair chunk of wordstuff, although you could grab all of those words and they would be about one third of the million-word fics that exist, and probably a drop in the bucket compared to the wordcount of The Wheel of Time.
So yes, I've been published, and I've written a lot, and you are free to say "Eh, so what?" to all of that, or that you don't like my material, so my opinion in the matter is invalid. Go find someone you do like and respect and ask them about whether there's anything about themselves that makes them special or better disposed to writing good things. You'll hear a lot, but you probably won't hear them say things like "it's in my genes" said seriously as the full answer.
What we often lack is practice, not talent, and it's on that place that many writers point out the advantages they have. And, for that matter, what NaNoWriMo is focusing on. The earliest thing that I can remember writing started before I had an age that ended with "teen", and I'm...at least twice that age now. And, unsurprisingly, it was fanfic. Crossover fanfic, no less. Before, we note, the existence of the Internet and the widespread availability and cachet that fic now has. The sort of thing that if your sibling threatens they know where it is and that they'll either destroy it or expose it to the world, you know they're serious.
By my own practiced hand now, those would be things I would look at as "the things I did when I was smaller and didn't know as much as I do now." But it was practice. So were the fandom roleplaying message boards that happened when schools got wired for the Internet. And the general fandom message boards that had a significant amount of fan-continuity with them. And joining LJ to write about the things I found interesting and linkable in the news. And then Dreamwidth, when it became clear that LJ was engaging in things that offended my principles. And Twitter - try making a complete point (or story) that fits into the 140 characters (then) of a single Tweet.
Which is to say, if you start today on writing, and you don't think anything you've done before counts, and you look at other stuff and go "it's so good, I could never do that!" you're forgetting that those writers have been writing for years. Your favorite author might have three novels out to their name, all within the last three years, but those are only the words you see on paper. What you aren't seeing is all the words that came before that didn't make it or aren't related to that project.
Also, we should talk about what you're not counting, because I'll bet you've done relevant writing before, too. I've been writing fanworks for decades at this point. I posted my first story to AO3 three years ago. When I was starting to get to the point of writing that story, I didn't think I had any relevant experience and wasn't good enough for it. The anxiety clouded my memory of the writing from early life, or the fully-formed (and then read aloud to an appreciative audience) short story-length PI spoof I put together in a one-day writing workshop when I was...somewhere in the early teens, I think. And the message boards, and being fandom-adjacent enough to make friends at university by understanding them when they talked about their Harry/Hermione ship.
I think a lot of people, when they conceive of writing something, they're thinking of the Great American Novel that will be stirring and enduring, or the instant hit that will sell exceedingly well and build a megafandom, and like so very much of what is shown to us through media, news, and entertainment, what we are seeing there is the exception to the asterisk of the footnote of the obscure reference of reality. If the instant hit novel is what you think you have to write before you qualify as a Real Writer, you're buying into a lie. (And all the short fiction, nonfiction, television, audio, comedy, etc. markets are shaking their fists and yelling that yet another person who could write for them is fixated on the novel.)
And that's if, if you want to write professionally at all, which a lot of people don't. They enjoy playing in the sandbox, but they don't necessarily want to make money off it or devote the amount of time and effort (both in writing and in marketing) it would take to make significant money off it. Or the place they enjoy playing the most is in fanfiction, where money always puts things on dicey legal ground. (But sometimes might land someone a professional gig, too, due to the quality of their work. Being a fanwork creator is no longer a death knell to your career.)
So, I'll close with this idea. At a convention not too far in the past, after panel on fanfiction writing and writers, a child not that much older than I was when I started was talking about the universe they had built in their head. They'd done character sheets, plot summaries, background research, all sorts of things, but they hadn't started writing the story yet, because they were afraid that it wouldn't be good enough and nobody would enjoy it. Now, I know that self-deprecation is my go-to method for encouraging someone else, but in this case, it seemed warranted. So I listened and I said that I thought they should go forward with the writing, and I pulled out one of my Internet devices and started scrolling through the legion of kudos notifications that I've been saving since I started posting works to AO3. After all, at that time, I was new to posting, I was writing a scattershot of fandoms, based on exchanges, and I hadn't written anything like the epic that this small child had planned out. And I was still swimming in kudos (and a few comments gathered over the years, too). So, I concluded to the small, if someone such as me can amass plenty of people thinking my work is good, they'll be able to do the same. All I wanted them to do was start writing.
Because they were good enough. And you are, too.
alexseanchai, I'm writing about writing. Suggestions for topics are most definitely welcome! There's still a lot of space to cover.]Let me say this to start: You are already good enough to write.
You are already good enough to write.
(Or draw, or vid, or podcast, or whatever other creative endeavor you have in mind.)
There is no secret gene or biological superpower or Applied Phlebotinum that means some people are better predisposed to the act of writing in their very core and some people are just never going to be good enough. If that were the truth, the publishing industry would have long since found the link and exploited it appropriately. Instead, much like the movie and television industry, publishing is suffering a major inability to believe that diverse audiences would buy works written by diverse authors containing diverse characters. Even with the statistics staring them in the face.
So, no, there's no magic involved that bars bars some people from doing writing because they will somehow physically be unable to do anything well.
Who am I to make such a claim? Well, one in a very long string of writers who have said much the same thing when asked about their inhuman creativity (or ability to put out material), for the most part.
Also, however, I'm a published author of a few different articles and pieces, a few of which I have been paid for, so yes, that means I've crossed the professional barrier, even if most of the writing I do is for fun and not profit. For Reasons (that will probably be explored as we go). And no, I haven't sold a novel yet, but I'm not actually interested in doing that right now, so it's hard to sell a thing you're not actually trying to write.
If that doesn't sway you, then I can say that, over the course of the last three years, the words that I can easily count have been over one hundred thousand for each year, and about half of that or so is on a single series of works, going bit by bit. That way counting doesn't include anything here, by the way, so fudge whatever additional wordcount seems appropriate for the last couple years of Dreamwidth posts. So at least two NaNovels, spread out over the course of the year, writing-wise, for at least the past three years. That's a fair chunk of wordstuff, although you could grab all of those words and they would be about one third of the million-word fics that exist, and probably a drop in the bucket compared to the wordcount of The Wheel of Time.
So yes, I've been published, and I've written a lot, and you are free to say "Eh, so what?" to all of that, or that you don't like my material, so my opinion in the matter is invalid. Go find someone you do like and respect and ask them about whether there's anything about themselves that makes them special or better disposed to writing good things. You'll hear a lot, but you probably won't hear them say things like "it's in my genes" said seriously as the full answer.
What we often lack is practice, not talent, and it's on that place that many writers point out the advantages they have. And, for that matter, what NaNoWriMo is focusing on. The earliest thing that I can remember writing started before I had an age that ended with "teen", and I'm...at least twice that age now. And, unsurprisingly, it was fanfic. Crossover fanfic, no less. Before, we note, the existence of the Internet and the widespread availability and cachet that fic now has. The sort of thing that if your sibling threatens they know where it is and that they'll either destroy it or expose it to the world, you know they're serious.
By my own practiced hand now, those would be things I would look at as "the things I did when I was smaller and didn't know as much as I do now." But it was practice. So were the fandom roleplaying message boards that happened when schools got wired for the Internet. And the general fandom message boards that had a significant amount of fan-continuity with them. And joining LJ to write about the things I found interesting and linkable in the news. And then Dreamwidth, when it became clear that LJ was engaging in things that offended my principles. And Twitter - try making a complete point (or story) that fits into the 140 characters (then) of a single Tweet.
Which is to say, if you start today on writing, and you don't think anything you've done before counts, and you look at other stuff and go "it's so good, I could never do that!" you're forgetting that those writers have been writing for years. Your favorite author might have three novels out to their name, all within the last three years, but those are only the words you see on paper. What you aren't seeing is all the words that came before that didn't make it or aren't related to that project.
Also, we should talk about what you're not counting, because I'll bet you've done relevant writing before, too. I've been writing fanworks for decades at this point. I posted my first story to AO3 three years ago. When I was starting to get to the point of writing that story, I didn't think I had any relevant experience and wasn't good enough for it. The anxiety clouded my memory of the writing from early life, or the fully-formed (and then read aloud to an appreciative audience) short story-length PI spoof I put together in a one-day writing workshop when I was...somewhere in the early teens, I think. And the message boards, and being fandom-adjacent enough to make friends at university by understanding them when they talked about their Harry/Hermione ship.
I think a lot of people, when they conceive of writing something, they're thinking of the Great American Novel that will be stirring and enduring, or the instant hit that will sell exceedingly well and build a megafandom, and like so very much of what is shown to us through media, news, and entertainment, what we are seeing there is the exception to the asterisk of the footnote of the obscure reference of reality. If the instant hit novel is what you think you have to write before you qualify as a Real Writer, you're buying into a lie. (And all the short fiction, nonfiction, television, audio, comedy, etc. markets are shaking their fists and yelling that yet another person who could write for them is fixated on the novel.)
And that's if, if you want to write professionally at all, which a lot of people don't. They enjoy playing in the sandbox, but they don't necessarily want to make money off it or devote the amount of time and effort (both in writing and in marketing) it would take to make significant money off it. Or the place they enjoy playing the most is in fanfiction, where money always puts things on dicey legal ground. (But sometimes might land someone a professional gig, too, due to the quality of their work. Being a fanwork creator is no longer a death knell to your career.)
So, I'll close with this idea. At a convention not too far in the past, after panel on fanfiction writing and writers, a child not that much older than I was when I started was talking about the universe they had built in their head. They'd done character sheets, plot summaries, background research, all sorts of things, but they hadn't started writing the story yet, because they were afraid that it wouldn't be good enough and nobody would enjoy it. Now, I know that self-deprecation is my go-to method for encouraging someone else, but in this case, it seemed warranted. So I listened and I said that I thought they should go forward with the writing, and I pulled out one of my Internet devices and started scrolling through the legion of kudos notifications that I've been saving since I started posting works to AO3. After all, at that time, I was new to posting, I was writing a scattershot of fandoms, based on exchanges, and I hadn't written anything like the epic that this small child had planned out. And I was still swimming in kudos (and a few comments gathered over the years, too). So, I concluded to the small, if someone such as me can amass plenty of people thinking my work is good, they'll be able to do the same. All I wanted them to do was start writing.
Because they were good enough. And you are, too.
no subject
Date: 2018-12-02 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-02 05:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-02 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 03:22 am (UTC)(Also, I think we may be subscription friends at least, looking over your entries. If that's a thing you would be okay with, because I tend to go commenting merrily in other people's spaces as a way of everyone getting to know everyone.)
no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 03:35 pm (UTC)(and, yes, that sounds good to me. I do the commenting thing as well. As might be obvious by random comment I left you)
no subject
Date: 2018-12-03 04:22 pm (UTC)