The road is long, with many a winding turn, which leads us to who knows where, who knows where?
Now we got the musical interlude out of the way…. I was reading Dave’s post on Monday, and it felt like something I could — perhaps should — have written in the last few years, over and over.
The difference between my situation and his is that I’m a fairly useless human being, good only at slinging words. Fiction or non-fiction it’s always words. And the one marketable skill I had before is lost, and besides, honestly, I never enjoyed it much. It’s just that I could do it, and was good at it. So when I thought “I’m done with writing; I’m walking off” there was nowhere to walk to. The alternative was always “sit in a corner and slowly die.” I mean, I could have done crafts, of course, but that required my being all with the marketing and taking them places and stuff, which… well… Is the part of writing I mostly fail at.
In a way though, I mostly walked away, and was doing other things. Those were just non-paying things, like fixing houses, moving, gardening, that sort of thing. And eventually I came back to writing, largely through older son giving me a way back. (I didn’t realize that was fragile, and needed to be kept on, which is (I think) responsible for the current silence. Gah. Getting back to it, though if this year would stop being a whirlwind of non-productive stuff it would help.)
Over the years, I’ve had lots of friends who sort of wondered off. One never knows what to say.
I keep coming back to the very first “how to write science fiction” book I read, the one by Orson Scott Card. I don’t remember what his test was, precisely, but it hinged on “If you can start it, then leave it and walk away, do so and whistle while you go, you’re a free man.”
In my entire time as a writer, and with everyone I’ve mentored, I’ve met exactly one person who could do that. most can’t. And the person who did that is an otherwise um… his professional vocation lies elsewhere, and he is very good at it. And enjoys it.
Most people who write, write because they must. Because, to be honest, they are broken in a particular way, and they can’t stop. Not even if something more appealing offers.
Only they do stop. Sometimes for years. But they either meander back, or fall into doing other kinds of writing that doesn’t pay and doesn’t have the same challenges. Kate — I don’t think she’ll be mad at me for telling — has been doing lots of fanfic, for instance.
Sometimes your heart just breaks, and you can’t find the way back for a while. Sometimes you’re too tired, too out of it. Sometimes the aversion therapy that we call “Traditional publishing” beats you to a pulp, and you give up. Honestly, if there were no blogs and no indie publishing, I’d have given up. I might still be writing, disconnected bits as they crossed my mind; Austen fanfic, that sort of thing. But in the week of the two firings, in 2018, I’d have walked away from trying to make a living at this.
Indie… It’s different. I can at least make the same or close to the same money I made from trad pub (It wasn’t that much) provided I keep writing at least one thing a month to keep the Amazon Algorithm happy. No, I haven’t been doing that.
In my case, it’s a peculiar form of executive dysfunction. (Yes, yes, the hot take on the writers strike is that they’re not striking, they just can’t write because no Adderal. The lack of adderal is part of it, but… not that, precisely.)
You see, it showed up in driving first. I know I can drive. I’ve never been in a “real” accident. I’m a good if cautious driver. But 12 years ago I stopped driving. Part of this was that our car, 12 years ago, was incredibly unreliable. And being terrified of being stranded in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t want to drive it. But we had it fixed and… I couldn’t convince myself to drive. Just …. I can’t explain it. I felt like, if I started driving I’d be fine, but I couldn’t start.
Of course, my explanation for that was that I was afraid. Look, I have a vivid imagination. And while I’m not scared of driving, precisely, I’m scared of EVERYONE ELSE DRIVING. I keep imagining the lunatics around me will do something bizarre and kill me. I conquered it to drive, but really, that’s all it was, right? It had finally overwhelmed me.
Then when we went to France… 5? years ago, I found out I couldn’t speak French in the exact same way I couldn’t drive. When pushed to do it because the store people and my companions couldn’t understand each other, I could speak it fine, as I did 25 years ago. But if there was an option, I kept my mouth shut and smiled a lot, because even though I could do it, and knew I could do it…. I couldn’t start.
The feeling was exactly the same as driving, but I thought the reason was different. I was embarrassed. I was shy. I was out of practice. Right?
… And then, somewhere along the line, I realized it was exactly the same thing with writing. I could force myself to write short pieces and get through them in rush and panic, but there was a barrier against starting. Same as driving. Same as languages.
Why? I don’t know. All of this dates from the same time I had (yet another) concussion 12 years ago. It just got worse and worse from there.
It could be that. Physical injury and physical issues account for a lot. We tend to think of things as deep set psychological issues, partly because we grew up in a Freudian age, but really, it’s just as likely to be physical. For instance, I found recently that I can get treed up a two step step stool. I can step up, but I can’t make myself come down, unless I hold onto something nearby. I mean, it’s utterly ridiculous. I’m two feet off the ground and I can’t step off. Even more ridiculous, I found that if I put my hand on the ceiling for that first step down, I can then come down. What sense does that make? None. But I’m not going nuts. It’s a middle ear and balance issue. I can’t step down because my middle ear tells me we’re dangerously out of balance, and I can’t override that sense of extreme danger. A hand holding somewhere, including the ceiling, which means if I fall I let go, overrides it with “We’re supported.” Stupid, uh? And I thought I was going nuts until we figured what the issue was. (I’ve always had ear issues, mostly due to very weird ear canals and multiple infections.)
Or the “I can’t start” could be psychological in formation. Something about the thing put you off so hard that you erased the first step, and your subconscious surrounded it with yellow danger tape, so you can’t start, even though you know how to do it, and know the fear is irrational.
I confess this could apply to driving — I never had an accident, but I drove for years — when we were broke — on an outdated glasses prescription, which meant that I knew I couldn’t see depth properly, and was forever on edge. This could have caused my back brain to associate “driving” and “mortal danger.”
It could also apply to writing. After the series of bizarre, often out of the blue, kicks to the teeth that was my traditional career, the surprising thing is NOT that this would form, but that it would form so subtly.
On the other hand, I’ll be the first to say I have no idea why it would apply to languages. Other than the Japanese gentleman I convinced I could speak Japanese by accident on a late night train in Portugal — no, I’m not gong to tell the story. It’s weird — when I was 21 or so, I’ve never had any experiences where languages even embarrassed me let alone scared me.
It’s also entirely possible the linkage broke in each case because of a long time without doing the thing. In the case of driving, because I didn’t trust the car. In the case of languages because I don’t have a lot of opportunity to use them. And in the case of writing…. the year of the five moves, then unpacking, then… well, moving again.
Turns out your brain sweeps through on the regular and does what I should do with the middle drawer in the kitchen “Uh… why do I even have this? I never use it. Toss.”
And what was tossed in each of those cases was the first linkage, the one that says “I start this, and know this so well, it just works.”
It’s possible. Who knows. It feels more traumatic than that, and heaven knows there’s been trauma, but it’s possible.
Anyway, according to older son, who dealt with a similar issue, the way to fix it is to start. Just push yourself to start. Reward yourself for even starting. Then increase the demand, slowly. Which is how I finally finished Bowl of Red. I now need to do that with Dyce. I didn’t realize you can’t conquer it once and be done. You need to stay on it.
Here’s the thing, though: I never know whether to help friends who are in that position, of it they’ve reached “Whistle as you go, you’re a free man/woman.”
I do know when it’s …. Stories you tell yourself to stop hurting, but you still want to do the thing. Like…. when you tell me there’s no way to make a living off indie. There is. You just have to keep working on it. It’s actually easier than making a living in trad. It’s just that because of the algorithm, you have to keep feeding the beast– er…. Amazon, even if it’s a short every two months. So you need to get where you can do that.
And I know it’s just a story to stop hurting, when you tell me there is no market for your stuff. The market is what it always was, only easier to access now, because you’re not going through the artificial funnel of trad pub.
That means there are fans for almost everything. Some of you are very weird, but you’ve found enough very weird fans who pay through the nose, because you’re the best purveyor of their crack. (I know. I talk to you off the board.) And some of you are more mainstream, and maybe haven’t found your audience yet, but you will, if you keep at it and do minimal stuff (like, for instance, tell your facebook followers you wrote something. Or sent me a link to your book, to one of my promo posts. Or…. you know, minimal stuff.) It might take time, because getting an audience is chaotic right now, but you’ll find one if you stay the course.
The audience is there. And all of us, myself included, are practically starving for good escapism. Immersive, interesting, creative, fun, with just enough strife to stay immersed. It’s pure gold right now. People will forgive a lot for that. Trust me. Some pieces of escapism have saved my life, now and then.
The road is long. As I tell my kids, when they’re despairing, or want to give up on this or that: The future is a very long time. Never say never. If it’s something you want or need to do, step back if you must, but don’t say “never again.” The future is a very long time and conditions, professions and you yourself change over time. More than you believe possible, I guarantee.
And if you need to take a breath, or need to lean on someone to come back: I’m here. I’m a lousy reader/critiquer/mentor, mostly because for the last several years I’ve had trouble critiquing too. The same sort of panic, but more justified, because I’m afraid of hurting someone.
I’m working on that too. Because well, I promised it on my blog fundraiser. (I’ll do an update on that soon, because it’s been interesting, but I want to fulfill all pledges, except mass deaths and tuckerizations — I need appropriate books for that — before the end of the month. Those will be fulfilled over the next year. Knocks on head.) But I’m not very reliable. And if you send me stuff to critique you really (no, really) have to remind me.
However, I’m here to talk, discuss what you think is wrong, help if I can.
Because heaven knows I might need it next week. Or next month. Or next year. Or in ten years.
The road is long. The future is deep and unknown. And writing is a bizarre profession. Sometimes the only people who get us are those similarly afflicted. So we must help each other. It’s all we can do.
Mad Genius Club 
79 responses to “With Many A Winding Turn – Sarah A. Hoyt”
Take care.
All I can do is all I can do.
I’m not giving up, Great Aunt. I’m just getting ready for the next push, in a different direction.
I observed that for me, writing is an addiction. By this I mean that something about the process of putting words on screen or paper triggers the same reward response as other addictions I’ve had [see: Why Alma has NO games like Tetris™ or Solitaire on her computers or phone]. The down side is that when I can’t write, I get withdrawal symptoms. Fiction or nonfiction doesn’t matter.
The one exception to this is when I am so mentally and emotionally drained that nothing functions above survival mode. I’ve not had the words stop entirely, but they have faded away far into the background and became hard to coax back within reach. It’s uncomfortable, and makes me worry when it happens, assuming I even have a brain cell left for worrying.
Tetris and Mah Jong for me.
Mah Jong is an absolutely amazing game. One of the very few good things about my cheap Chromebook is that it doesn’t have that on it.
Dan will unlock them for me, on say long trips. SERIOUSLY. No self control.
And I LOST TWO YEARS TO TETRIS.
Fashion games and interior decorating games. Think I might finally have broken myself of those.
At the moment, Twitter has kind of taken their place for me, along with blogs when I finally decide I’ve had enough of the tweeting cesspool. If I really want to write, the best way is to be off the internet, with nothing to do but stare at my word processor. I have a choice: I can write, or I can not write. No other options.
This is why I insist I Am Not a Writer, despite a couple of published counter-examples. Writing is not my default creative state, but because I’m a major-league reader, I can do a pretty decent job of it.
My default creative state is arts & crafts, and my addiction can be fed through my school-season job (which is one reason that is the BEST job for me.) It can also have side-shoots with music, particularly lyrics.
Come to think of it, though, the main thing about my creative outlets is that I find it hard to resist certain styles of challenge. Two of my published stories started with “I can win this particular competition,” and I’m the sort of contrarian who reacts to “you can’t do this” with “just watch me.”
Match 3 games are my anxiety relievers. When everything else is just spinning, they can bring me enough focus and peace to be able to go to bed. And there was a game back in a seriously depressive time called “Peggle”, that I played and played and played, because it had a little music cheer thing at the end of each level, that made me feel like I could at least have one thing I could do and get rewarded for in life. (I never play it any more, but it was a life-saver/sanity saver at the time).
As for the writing/language/driving thing. I feel like you have part of the solution, but are missing a piece. The place to look isn’t just what was happening at the time of pushing through the problems, but what happened just before or just after that has emotionally connected to it.
Ask yourself, “What happened just BEFORE/AFTER this problem” (and may have happened multiple times in slight variations). Like for me: “Every time I start to lose weight and get in shape something bad happens.” Does it really? Probably not, at least not cause-effect level happenings, but timings have been suspect. But, my lizard brain has decided that that is the case, and therefore, to preserve pain and suffering from effecting someone/myself, I just won’t/can’t lose weight, beyond a pound or 5.
To me, it sounds like big moves might be the thing. And if you don’t want to move again, then you can’t possibly do the thing that causes the move…Logical and rational to the little lizard of safety in our back brains. (Maybe he’s a gecko? Insurance and safety and all that.) But, I don’t know all your life, so it might be something else. But look for the correlation. Anyway, of you can find the correlation, then you can start MythBusting and break the chains between them and that will free up the other thing. Just some thoughts.
It’s not an addiction. I can quit any time.
*hides plot threads stuffed into pockets*
Yessirree. Any. Time.
Metroidvanias are my weakness. 2D platforming Metroidvanias. All visual. No words. just rooms to explore for treasures and passages and a big map to explore.
Hollow Knight… Oh Hollow Knight ….
This. This is the hard thing to get through. Have to work hard enough to pay the bills, get hit with Unexpected Major Bill out of nowhere, have to work harder to pay it all back. iFlop.
…Trying to at least sketch out the words, a bit at a time.
The hand on something thing is not about grip. Having a hand on another physical object gives you an additional point of reference, which lets the brain resolve through the extra uncertainty.
So it is normal for a hand on the ceiling to be sufficient to resolve a balance issue. I suspect even holding onto a broomstick that is touching a corner or solid object would be sufficient as well. But definitely test that one only under supervision.
Addendum: I wonder if that effect is why holding onto the harness of a horse is supposed to let infantry keep up with cavarly at auch high pace than they could march?
If that is a real effect, I would wonder if the horse is providing a stable reference so the infantry are not spending as much energy/processing power keeping and recovering their balance from running on uneven ground?
First – being wary, short of panic attack, of OTHER drivers is 100% sane. I haven’t counted lately, but at least a half dozen times I have NOT had an accident because I assume that EVERY other driver out there is an idiot.
Second – Besides what Harry notes below, the step stool thing is a symptom of age. I used to be able to go down rather steep drops by hand – no more. Even one step up, and I’m reaching out for a known solid object.
Third – house fixing, gardening, etc. are NOT “non-productive” (I’m not sure that you meant that, but it sounded like that to me). They’re just not WRITING productive. (Not obviously cash income producing, either – although I’m sure that your various houses have sold for more money in the long run, and if it was a vegetable garden, money saving.)
The rest of the post… Yes, sigh, that’s me. This office remodel project is close to finished (door to finish stripping, priming, painting, and installing; couple of fiddly bits). I’m reminding myself at least three times a day that when the door is done, I AM ON A FIVE DAY A WEEK SCHEDULE OF WRITING. Weekends for any domestic things other than usual housework.
Now, back to stripping the door. So any later comments from me, should maybe be ignored…
I was walking around holding onto furniture when I was nine months old. Then there was a period where I could walk as long as I held onto something. Like a teddy bear. (By one I could walk on my own.)
Thank you. I needed this.
Thank you for the encouragement, and the reminder that we all go through this.
What she said.
I’m bad at writing. Not because I don’t know what I’m doing- even when I really, really don’t- but because I don’t do it enough, I think.
I should be finishing that chapter that has been gathering dust and plot bunnies on the screen for the last few months. Only it’s not perfect. That’s one of the major problems. See, everything thing I write is wrong because it’s not perfect.
And I do see the irony in that. There is no ‘perfect,’ only better and worse and incremental steps towards the former happen when one actually puts digits to the interface. There are *so* many things wrong with everything I’ve ever written, they can’t be un-seen.
I fixed two problems today that have been bugging me for (unmentionable amount of time). They’re not perfect. But they fit the scene much better than what I intended the first time. Or the fifth.
It’s not like when I lost music. Or when I stopped writing for a decade or so (crazy, right?). It’s that the things, I know which way they need to go, but the middle bits are bugging me. Always the middle bits. Endings, those can be fun. Beginnings, love those. The middle bits that aren’t frenetic action, mystery, or intrigue? Gah. Those, I suck at.
At some point in the near future those disparate plot threads are going to have to be tied together. I’m talking about the one chapter. It stinks on ice. It’s been rewritten (mumblety) times, and it’s still not perfect. Soon, it’s going to have to be kicked out of the nest regardless.
My readers are going to kill me. I am astonished they keep showing up to read after so many days. The fact that other people are entertained by the stuff I think is so bad, wrong, and uninteresting is gobsmacking.
But there it is. Other people are weird.
If one has to write, the write one must. Even if it stinks on ice. Even if it ain’t perfect. Words onna page. Somehow, someway.
Dan, a huge number of us are bad at middles, don’t be too hard on yourself about that. Just keep trying to make up crazy incidents and breadcrumbs to lead to the end.
Also, go read Dwight Swain, Techniques of the selling writer.
Sometimes I use Plot Skeletons to ensure that SOMETHING happens in the middle.
You’ve probably heard this before, but what you’re describing sounds a lot like Executive Dysfunction, which can be caused by emotional trauma (see Trad Pub model), ADHD, or brain damage (see concussions, etc).
From what I understand CBT (real CBT, not the anti-CBT the DIE folks are trying to pass off as it) can help build bypasses around broken infrastructure. Might be worth seeing if you can find a professional to talk to about it, if you haven’t already. Tricky part may be finding an actual pro to talk too, as opposed to a credential holder.
It struck me as familiar, because I’m dealing with a certain amount of that from some other stuff (had a really really “fun” customer where everything you said could and would be used against you, even if that wasn’t actually what you said…), so for me it is mostly adverse training, but being hit in the head repeatedly can and will just break the control circuits outright. Especially if they were flaky to begin with.
And rewiring a brain around a short gets to be a lot harder once one is older.
Executive Dysfunction is also one of the hallmarks of ADHD. One thing that is indicated (particularly in younger folk who haven’t built a workaround) is impaired Nonverbal Working Memory.
The way I saw it explained was like this: Imagine you want to make a PB&J sandwich. If you have NWM, the *first* thing you do is picture the completed item, a PB&J sandwich. Then you reference that image to figure out that you need bread, peanut butter, and jelly, and work backwards from that to build the steps of the task.
The explanation went on to explain that someone with impaired NVM is sailing blind, no picture in their head, and they’re basically groping for the how-to instructions because they don’t have a clear picture to work back from.
There are methods to build or re-build the process, like you say. But it’s worth looking up.
Apparently you can also anti-train yourself to not to use your NWM. A lot of computer games short circuit the process by giving the players the steps before showing the end state. It ends up that regular gamers can end up with under-developed executive function.
The funny thing is one of the ways to fix that is, when faced with a new abstract task, to act like you are telling someone else all of the steps to complete the abstract objective. Then you follow the instructions yourself instead. The really hilarious part is gamers are actually *very* good at that part (concretization of an abstract objective); they just don’t naturally make the connection until someone prompts them.
I have ADHD but getting to the point I CAN’T do things at all rests on one of the other things.
Yes. Just from the timing, it sounds like the concussions damaged the region you were using for all of that. But what I’m given to understand is the brain is plastic enough that it is at least partly possible to retrain undamaged sections to do the work. But it’s tricky and works best under the supervision of someone who really understands it.
Sort of like physical therapy for the brain. Throwing ADHD into the mix just makes it all more “fun”.
That why I’m thinking it might be worth talking with a professional who actually knows what they’re doing, if you haven’t already.
“If you can start it, then leave it and walk away, do so and whistle while you go, you’re a free man.”
This landed with me today, because I’m currently working on a story for the Raconteur Press Moggies in Space anthology…and I hate it. It uses characters I’ve played with before, but it takes them in a much darker direction than I really wanted this world to go. This story should probably be hidden in a drawer, encrypted, password protected, and unable to be seen by human eyes other than mine.
But simply “give up and don’t finish it” isn’t an option. The story is in me, and there are about a thousand more words of it that I need to get out. There is no other path forward but to write those words and see this through to the end.
TL;DR version: yep, I’m broken in this particular way.
Honey, you don’t want to hear this, but….
Sometimes those stories are one’s best work.
No, actually that makes me feel a little better. It makes me think that maybe there’s a reason that I have to write this, rather than my psyche just not letting me abandon it in the middle. Maybe there are other people who need to read it.
Well, it’s done at any rate. We’ll see how I feel about it in a few days.
“Maybe there are other people who need to read it.”
Author Robin McKinley has a book based on a fairytale with a rather horrifying premise, and she took the premise to its more realistic conclusion. (And then went on further from there, because you would NOT want to leave a book in that place.)
She’s since written that a surprising number of survivors of that type of trauma have found her book helpful in processing it, which started out surprising her. I think that was a book she felt she had to write rather than one she *wanted* to write.
I went around telling anyone who would listen that I would never ever ever write another story like “Isabelle and the Siren.”
And I haven’t.
It is heart-warming to hear from the people who’ve had depression and liked the story for it.
Sarah, you get the same advice Dave got. Focus on what can do, blow off the rest.
Can’t write today? Cut the grass. Can’t even get it together to cut the grass? Feed the dog/cat/shoggoth. You’ll be better tomorrow.
The audience is there. They have money in their hands, they’re slavering to buy what you’ve got. And why are they slavering? They’re HUNGRY!!! Because publishing is infested by idiots.
Like this one:
Ellen Datlow 🇺🇦
@EllenDatlow
It’s sad (to me) that sf devolved to a state that readers can’t take unhappy/downbeat endings. While Fiction Editor at OMNI Magazine, I was known for publishing downbeat sf and most readers had no problem with it-because the stories were great.
2:43 AM · Jun 13, 2023
This -idiot- thinks it is the readers who are the problem. Those stupid readers can’t take an unhappy ending, damn them. (And by the way, Omni sucked. I never bought it.)
Or, and this is something I’ve been bitching about since 2010, all we ever see are unhappy endings, unworthy heroes, propaganda and pretentious crap written by pretentious Leftists.
I’ve been -forced- to f-ing well write my own, something I’m pretty damn salty about I must say. Thanks to the likes of Ellen Datlow and every other supercilious NYC publishing a-hole who thinks we, the readers, are stupid and unworthy of their great skills.
There is no danger of the audience drying up, I don’t think.
Didn’t Onmni run, “Number of the Beast?” That wasn’t a downer.
Not under Ellen Datlow.
Also I don’t think Number of the Beast was serialized.
Look, she killed 3 sf mags, by rolling left to die, and each time got handed something bigger and better to kill. She should talk.
But it’s all Marxist virtue signaling. None of these mags had a robust bottom line, at any time.
Pulp magazines used to sell like crazy. Then they… stopped? Killed by shortages? Competition? Never really understood that.
I do know what killed Marvel and DC Comics. Fellow travelers of Ellen Datlow. In the 1992, I recall it well.
No. The taste changed. I.e. the editors were the people educated in colleges in the sixties and seventies, and they wanted invitations to the right parties. “Literature” you know?
They tried to force the heathen fans of SF/F to wear pants. It didn’t go well.
BTW my best selling book has an unhappy ending: Other Rhodes. BUT there’s hope, and it’s not grey goo.
Hmmm….. [an eeevile thought occurs]
Write a story about the ridiculous woken witches at a mainstream publishing company… in an apocalypse. Give it a sad ending.
I bet that breaks your writer’s block. ~:D
You mean like that one PNR editor who would probably vanish in a puff of soot and brimstone if Holy Water touched her? I suspect a number of writers and readers would pay to read that.
Why am I thinking about that Con Vampire series where the publishers are various types of demons? 😈
I think those predate this individual’s plunge into infamy. But a similar spirit [or animus] animates them.
The possibilities for Tuckerizations are limitless.
I really don’t remember, except I picked up a magazine with part of it to read on TDY. I don’t think I read the whole thing until the trade paperback came out.
I was thinking that I recognized her name on some things I’d liked. You know what they were? Horror. She seems to have specialized in horror in the 80s and 90s. (And horror fantasy, with Terri Windling as co-editor.)
I don’t remember any of her SF anthologies, and it makes me think that she switched genres for Reasons but didn’t leave her genre expectations behind. Downer endings are THE thing in horror, that’s kind of the point. Not so much for SF as an overall thing.
Just learned today Marvel Comics has killed off the Punisher because he was too popular with people favorable to law enforcement. Made him commit suicide.
He’s one of my son’s favorite Marvel characters.almost afraid to ask him how he feels about it.
I wonder what escape clause there is?
If they bring him back wielding a bike-lock as his chosen weapon and bashing conservatives?
Or at least hand off his mantle to a bike-lock-wielder who courageously beats mothers over the head to defend the right to mutilate children.
They’ve revived all sorts of people in the face of fan back lash.
Well, it’s very hard for a Marvel comics character to m stay dead.
very true. they have even brought back Bucky and Jason Todd. (Though Bucky’s revival has the excuse of being AWESOME.)
I thought Jason Todd was DC?
Yes, he is.
True, I was just thinking of the canonical list of people who stay dead.
(It’s not true though. Death by origin story is DEAD.)
Marvel’s Thunderbird (John Proudstar), one of the “New X-men”, died on the second mission of that team.
Mind you, he was briefly back twice and apparently is permanently back now.
Team origin stories don’t cut it. Personal ones required.
Thomas and Martha Wayne
Abin Sur (who gave Hal Jordan the Green Lantern ring)
Ho Yinsen (fellow prisoner who helped build the Iron Man suit)
Anya (Magneto’s daughter)
Omni was that shiny mag I’d pick up every month at Lichtman’s or Book City or whatever store I was haunting at the time. I’d flip through, see all the perty pikchurs and put it back on the shelf. Lame. Just plain lame. And kinda gross, pretty often.
Did they ever print anything worth reading? Possibly. Even a blind pig finds the odd acorn, right? But if they did it was well hidden among all the pretentious propagandistic crap. Certainly I never found it.
That whole thing about “If you don’t have to do it, you shouldn’t” is a scam. It is an attempt to eliminate competition, for most writers who say it.
Now, some people are addicted to story and are uncomfortable about encouraging others to be addicted. But. The vast majority of writers in history have been pragmatic writers who wrote for cash, until this whole idea came around that only the helplessly addicted should write. The addicts today are the people who believed the scam and still kept going, as opposed to those who didn’t and still kept going (or never heard the discouraging word).
I know.
I always hated “if you can be discouraged, you should be” because it meant that older writers felt virtuous being horrible to newbies. So did editors and publishers.
I don’t know about consciously trying to eliminate competition so much as: “This is a pain in the backside and not a particularly easy way to make money. If you neither enjoy doing it for the funsies, nor are successful at/dependent on it for money-making, that just leaves obsession and validation as reasons to do it.”
Pardon me, you seem to have triggered a rant. (Woke-ies are not the only ones with triggers, it seems.)
In my personal experience, waaaay back at the beginning around 2010 I was advised that I needed to finish what I’d started, because it was fabulous, and don’t quit Day Job. As Kathy Shaidle told me, “you will have dozens of sales.” Not a comment on my skillz, but rather a statement about the book business. Certainly in Canada, dozens of sales is considered pretty normal.
Beyond those two things which are self-evident but difficult, I’ve received very little other than raw encouragement and “hurry up I want to know what happens.”
Relieved of the burden of justifying my efforts commercially, I wrote much more. I’m a little weird that way, to be honest.
Thus, I always encourage people to write the story THEY want to read, especially if no one else is. That way the reward is immediate. Write it down first, then worry about the other BS later.
Probably not the best way, but that’s how I do it.
There, I feel better now. ~:D
“write the story THEY want to read”
This is why I have a book published. And its tiny number of sales. I can take that sucker out every so often and I still like it, so I did the right thing.
See? Its a good idea. After all, we writers have to live with this stuff in our heads all day, every day.
I’m not loving the idea of living with killing off [Random Character] as a crappy plot point to meet the supposed requirements of the 18-24 old age cohort. Maybe I’m weird but it feels to me like there might be karma attached to things like that. These people are pretty real to me, after all.
Agreed. This is the real lesson of sons like “Make Your Own Kind of Music” and “Garden Party.” There’s no point in being pretentiously weird for the sake of being weirdly pretentious. But unless an author is extraordinarily gifted in writing to market, the author’s first audience/reader is going to be the author’s own self.
I’ve been washing a lot of dishes and doing other household chores. It’s an area where I don’t feel crippled by perfectionism.
Lawn mowing for me. A zen pursuit. If I don’t try to get close to the trees and trimming bits with the big mower, the shaggy parts don’t bother me.
I’m sure someone with OCD would experience it as an assault. Those lens-shaped longish bits where I blew past all the trees? Aiiieee!!!
[…] RECENTLY FRIENDS ARE LEAVING THE FIELD AND WHISTLING AS THEY GO: With Many A Winding Turn. […]
I need to find my way back. A few years ago I realized that I am NOT a novelist. I just can’t make myself tell a story that long; shorts, possibly novella length but closing in on 100k words? I could tell a dozen stories in that! And having come to this realization, I sort of…shut down. Because somewhere in my head is an admonition that if you aren’t writing novels, it just doesn’t count. It’s pointless.
Silly, I know. But those internalized voices have such a hold over us, don’t they? I still WRITE, of course. I can’t not. But I write long, meandering FB posts and journal entries and letters to the editor. I don’t write fiction. The ideas still churn around but I can’t get started because the voice says “It’s not going to be a novel, so why bother?” And I don’t.
What you’re saying, though, is it’s time to tell that voice to STFU. N’est ce pas?
Yes! I’m not Sarah, but yes, try writing fiction again.
I stared with short stories. My first three fiction books are sets of linked short stories. I still do books of short stories (have one coming out in the fall). And now is a great time to “write short.” There are new publishers that only do sets of themed short stories, and people love them! Here’s one of them: https://thelawdogfiles.com/raconteur-press
You have nothing to lose by writing short stories, or flash fiction, or whatever you want to.
40k is a novel for indie. So….. why not?
Took me years of shorter works to reach novels. (And now I seldom write shorter than novella.)
But go ahead and sell them. I find collections sell better than individual stories.
Oh, my. Thank you all for the encouragement! I will wrestle my inner demons into submission—or, possibly, just feed them ice cream until they curl up for a good nap and sneak past them. We’ll see how it goes.
And I had no idea anything under at least 70k could be considered a novel anymore, anywhere. 40k is a mountain I could climb. Might take a few tries, and I’ll probably fall off at least once, but… yeah. I can look at 40k and not break into a flop sweat. So again, thank you!
As someone who ran that Austen fan fic board for years, I’d say you’re always welcome there.
Sarah, two small tidbits from my motorcycling days: 1.) Yes, they are trying to kill you. 2.) You’re not paranoid enough. I sold my bike in the early 2000s, before the explosion of cell phones. Drivers were bad enough back then on the crowded streets and freeways of Houston. It is vastly worse now. I had to leave my rural fastness to take my Mom to a medical appointment in that accursed town, and was tailgated more in those six hours than I was in the previous six months. Aggressive, deranged drivers everywhere…
I am not sure I really belong here but I occasionally read these posts and find them fascinating and deeply interesting. If I am welcome I will almost certainly be a lurker only as I am not only not a writer but have little ability to communicate in written form and certainly no feel of any need to write. I have always just been a consumer of the written word. Since pre school. (I had already been taught to read by my Mother) I have been an avid reader and got hooked on reading by so many genres. Heinlein and Bradbury may have been the primary hooks into sci-fi and fantasy but I also love biographies, history, and especially science. The last time I moved I had to give away several thousand books (mostly paperback) due to lack of space,Basically I signed up on WordPress just now solely to post this here because I found so many interesting ideas about myself in the comments to his post. The wisdom and insights from CDO (that’s like OCD only with the letters in alphabetical order like they should be) to ADHD to the balance issue of reference vs grip and all of the insightful ideas you all seem to have. Thanks for reading this and I hope I am welcome to read and gain from your thoughts and ideas.
I’m familiar with this feeling. I have math anxiety. It just about murdered my college degree in IT. I did everything else in the world to avoid doing calculus homework, and it feels like there is a mountain in the way when you move in that direction. I also found a temporary fix. Ignore it.
I determined my anxiety was me being theatrical to impress myself with the greatness and rightness of my position, much like the mornings where I was lying in bed, unwilling to hit the snooze alarm. The way around it (for me, at least) is to recognize it, ignore it, and just do it. Alarm rings, get UP without all the drama and head right into the bathroom. Admittedly, the siren call of the distraction still rings out, but ignoring it and focusing directly on the goal gets you extra snoozing time in the evening. Now, I will admit that I only partially vanquished math in this fashion and graduated with a very low score, but I won, and haven’t had to integrate or differentiate in decades (although I can still calculate Taylor series if need be).