And So It Begins
Begins might be the wrong word, but after a pinch more than five years of writing, I finally feel like I'm finding my voice. Having bounced around from the sort of newbie writer that spits out cliche riddled dreck, to dipping my toes in the genre fiction pool, proclaiming myself focused on YA fiction, earning a MFA in writing and finally starting to write the sort of fiction I read, I feel like I'm on something resembling the right path. In terms of output, I've always been sporadic (a little less so when I was writing the above mentioned dreck) and historically, my internal editor has been a lazy oaf who might give a story a quick glance before yelling at the writer part of my brain to "Ship it out!" So, doing the math, bad stories plus few stories equals rejection.But in the last year my editor brain has gotten off his rump and done a rough and tumble bully job on the writer in me.
I'm not sure if it was a matter of recognizing how awful (or at least half-hearted) some of my efforts were, a sense of how much better the work of many of my peers was, or just a maturity settling in that I wanted to write quality fiction that was published in markets I could be proud to appear in. I've become selective in where I submit, the clunkers are getting less frequent (as I spend more time rewriting), I'm writing the type of fiction I might personally want to read and I'm reading (a lot, both the work of my students which has given me a whole new perspective on the revision process and work from some amazing writers). So after five years, I'm finally figuring a few things out and while I feel a bit like I'm starting anew, it's a great feeling to know that the stories I'm working on are sound ideas and that I have the skills to make them something special (and the gumption to hold onto them until they resemble something worth the time of the editors I'm submitting them to).
December 3, 2009 9:20 AM
Bully for you. I don't know if I've reached the point yet where I feel like I'm not churning out crap, but I'm glad you're there.
BTW, love the green wallpaper.
December 3, 2009 10:17 AM
I continue to learn and chase after improvement.
December 3, 2009 10:20 AM
Oh, I'm still churning out crap, it's just that I'm recognizing it better now. And I'm more reluctant to send it out into the world until I've my best to clean it up into something I'd be proud of. I think spending a few years solely focused on horror fiction (that I didn't really read recreationally in the first place) put me in a mind set of churn and turn with little regard for the market or what I was producing. I haven't written anything I could really describe as horror since my Borderlands story (so over a year ago). In that time, I've worked on my novel, a thesis, and a handful of short stories. Those shorts (at least the ones I'm putting through the ringer and submitting as opposed to the ones I look back on and toss into the trunk of forgotten tales) are finding homes in places that I'm pleased about. Now I just need to focus on writing more (and designating writing time each day).
And thanks for the comment on the background. Do you think the header still looks okay with it (you are the designer after all)?
December 3, 2009 12:54 PM
Great thoughts and post- I'm starting to feel that writers are always moving through these stages of improvement, of learning and becoming more comfortable in the game. All of which you articulate really well with this.
December 3, 2009 1:14 PM
Cate - Don't we all.
Margaret - Thanks for the comment, I've struggled with what I wanted to be as a writer for the better part of the last 18 months. In part thanks to an abandoned thesis that's become a novel-in-progress, a new thesis that was actually completed, a matter of questioning what my writing priorities and goals were, and making an effort to immerse myself in good writing (be it what I'm reading or trying to cobble together on my own). I realize I have a very long way to go, but at least for now some it is seeming to make sense when I sit down at the keyboard.