I truly envy those people who can sit at their computers, let their fingers fly over their keyboards, and even freaking smile while they clatter out some new plot developement on whatever manuscript on which they are currently working.
I am not one of those writers. Every time I reach the end of a page, and my cursor shifts to the next, I want to shout, dance, writhe around on the floor in the kind of supreme ecstasy reserved for defloration rituals in primitive tribes. Quite frankly, when I reach the end of a page, I'm drained, tired, and feeling rather ho-hum about what I've just written.
But then there are times when I'm humming along, lost for just the briefest of moments in that world, and I'm not writing anymore, but actually seeing what's happening unfold before me, and I want to cry at how wonderful it all is and jump up and kiss the first person I see, even if it is the zit-infested barrista telling me my coffee is up. Because those moments--the dream as John Gardner calls it--are so few and far between for me that I sometimes wonder if I'm kidding myself.
I'm coming to the belief that writers are the ultimate narcissists. We put our words, our blood to paper. We hoard them, pick away at them until they are perfect before we thrust them before the world. "See? See what I've done?" we ask.
And then we wait in agony for not just anyone, but someone with some effing power to tell us, "Yes. We love it. Yes. We will publish it." The ultimate validation, the end result of all that longing for someone to just tell us that they like us, that we are good.
For the briefest of moments, it is enough to keep us going, and then the darkness falls down around us again because we are once more faced with the blinking cursor on the blank page and the thought, What if I can't do it again? What if they made a mistake, and I'm terrible?
And oh, god, it becomes so hard to keep going, to lose yourself in the pleasure of writing because the vanity and the pride and all of those terrible things the Bible warns you about begin to sing a terrible chorus of failure in your head, and you are wondering as the words begin to stutter out of you if they are any good, and who will love them, or, even worse, who will roll their eyes and shudder before tossing what you've spent months of your life working on into the nearest waste basket.
And every writing teacher, or instructional writing text you've ever read preaches to not let that critic get in the way, but it is always the critic to whom you write, always her voice that keeps you from writing the next sentence, which you know without a doubt, will be the most atrocious string of words ever committed to paper.
When you are a perfectionist, the hardest thing to do is let down that wall and just do it.
I am not one of those writers. Every time I reach the end of a page, and my cursor shifts to the next, I want to shout, dance, writhe around on the floor in the kind of supreme ecstasy reserved for defloration rituals in primitive tribes. Quite frankly, when I reach the end of a page, I'm drained, tired, and feeling rather ho-hum about what I've just written.
But then there are times when I'm humming along, lost for just the briefest of moments in that world, and I'm not writing anymore, but actually seeing what's happening unfold before me, and I want to cry at how wonderful it all is and jump up and kiss the first person I see, even if it is the zit-infested barrista telling me my coffee is up. Because those moments--the dream as John Gardner calls it--are so few and far between for me that I sometimes wonder if I'm kidding myself.
I'm coming to the belief that writers are the ultimate narcissists. We put our words, our blood to paper. We hoard them, pick away at them until they are perfect before we thrust them before the world. "See? See what I've done?" we ask.
And then we wait in agony for not just anyone, but someone with some effing power to tell us, "Yes. We love it. Yes. We will publish it." The ultimate validation, the end result of all that longing for someone to just tell us that they like us, that we are good.
For the briefest of moments, it is enough to keep us going, and then the darkness falls down around us again because we are once more faced with the blinking cursor on the blank page and the thought, What if I can't do it again? What if they made a mistake, and I'm terrible?
And oh, god, it becomes so hard to keep going, to lose yourself in the pleasure of writing because the vanity and the pride and all of those terrible things the Bible warns you about begin to sing a terrible chorus of failure in your head, and you are wondering as the words begin to stutter out of you if they are any good, and who will love them, or, even worse, who will roll their eyes and shudder before tossing what you've spent months of your life working on into the nearest waste basket.
And every writing teacher, or instructional writing text you've ever read preaches to not let that critic get in the way, but it is always the critic to whom you write, always her voice that keeps you from writing the next sentence, which you know without a doubt, will be the most atrocious string of words ever committed to paper.
When you are a perfectionist, the hardest thing to do is let down that wall and just do it.
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