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thessalianHey, look! It's a post where I'm not bitching about work! (Then again, I've only been here an hour.) Nor am I going to bitch about the state of my health (no, I am not feeling better. I am resigned to the blech because the doctors don't give a flying monkey). No, instead I am going to bitch about something completely different! Rejoice!
Seriously, I'm having a thing at the moment of the "I don't know what's wrong with me" variety in terms of the writing. Basically in that I have not actually been doing it lately. Well, okay, fanfic, but you know what I mean. I have words, I have characters, I even have story ... but I guess what I don't have is confidence. I just feel like an utter mediocrity, nothing comes out as well as I want it to, I can never come up with a better way to put it so that it will come out as well as I want it to and in the end, by the time I actually have writing time, I'm too tired or apathetic or just plain flattened to bother. It's different with fanfic; there's already an investment there. It seems easier to get invested in something that has inspired me - a thing with an existing structure - than it is to build a structure to inspire myself and then get invested in that. If that makes any sense.
I mean, it's not as if there's anything wrong with writing fanfic. It's just that I always harboured dreams of being paid for writing fiction and I get further and further from that every day. At least part of it's a confidence issue, I suppose; it's not like I actually do anything sensible like write things and let other people read them very often, or try to submit anything anywhere, or even write original stuff much. And without external input, it's a little hard to have confidence in much ... at least if you're like me and generally your own worst critic. Having been in a gently deepening depressive funk for the last few months probably doesn't help, either. And having been sick the last three weeks probably makes it even worse.
But in the end, at least part of it's to do with the fact that ... well, I am not all that, writer-wise. My style has a certain appeal, but not a particularly wide-ranging one. I have no poetry. I have a very good ear for dialogue but a very bare-bones look at descriptive narrative. It doesn't help that I don't actually like flowery, poetic prose very often. I am probably the textbook definition of 'prosaic' in that regard; give me enough description to draw me a picture that I can colour in with my own imagination, give me characters that I can believe in, and above all, give me what happened, and I'm happy. Make me wade through a ball pit of beautiful translucent soap-bubble prose to get to the bits of the story I want, and I will inevitably grow bored and skip over the painstakingly poetic narrative until I find the plot. I'm not saying that all poetic narrative is bad, by the way. It's just not what I like. And because I don't appreciate it and don't believe in it, I can't write it. Maybe I have a skewed view of the sort of fiction I write in terms of what sells, but a lot of the success stories I've been hearing come from those who use words like a paintbrush, whereas I tend to use mine like a camera. Both are art forms, but a camera shows you what's there through the eye of the person taking the picture, whereas a paintbrush can show you anything and relies on texture and style as much as lighting and angle and colour or lack thereof.
Of course, a lot of this could just be the mood talking. It's a little hard not to be self-defeatist in my current situation. There's the job thing, about which I have bitched at length. I don't get out much and I don't talk to enough people, which in and of itself is a vicious cycle - I don't talk to people, thus I get lonely and depressed and no fit company for anyone, thus I talk to people even less and so on and so on. There's getting the brush-off from disinterested medical personnel to whom I turn for help, which is to the self-esteem what a round of buckshot is to a balloon animal. However much I try to make with the seasonal festivities on my own, the fact is that I'm not entirely looking forward to a Christmas on my own as anything but a two-day reprieve from the job. I'm tired, I'm sick, I'm stressed and I am struggling to find things I'm looking forward to. If I want optimism, I have to make it myself, and finding the energy to do so is hard.
Also, I cannot find my cellphone or my iPod. I thought they might have fallen out of my handbag at the office, but no luck. The only other option is that they fell out of my handbag at the cafe were I had lunch yesterday. If so, I can only hope that the people at the next table handed them in to the waitresses, or that the waitress found them, and that they're sitting behind the counter waiting for me when I pop in at lunchtime today to ask about it. If not ... well, shit. The commute is miserable without my music and that phone, while cheap as all hell, is brand fucking new, and I don't want to have to pass out yet another number change.
Fuck it. I don't like being all blue and miserable and depressed. I am going to get some work done, have another cup of coffee and think story. Maybe it'll be fanfic, maybe not. Maybe no one will give a shit about it, but I will. Maybe I will never make money from the writing, but if I find the enjoyment in it again, that won't matter. I am going to drag myself out of this mood, damnit! Though I'll admit that it'd be a lot easier to do so if I could just be less sick. But the lurgy will pass eventually, I'm sure, even if I do get the brush-off by senior nurse specialists at the walk-in clinic and have to slog through it the hard way.
This too shall pass. I will keep telling myself that until it does.
Seriously, I'm having a thing at the moment of the "I don't know what's wrong with me" variety in terms of the writing. Basically in that I have not actually been doing it lately. Well, okay, fanfic, but you know what I mean. I have words, I have characters, I even have story ... but I guess what I don't have is confidence. I just feel like an utter mediocrity, nothing comes out as well as I want it to, I can never come up with a better way to put it so that it will come out as well as I want it to and in the end, by the time I actually have writing time, I'm too tired or apathetic or just plain flattened to bother. It's different with fanfic; there's already an investment there. It seems easier to get invested in something that has inspired me - a thing with an existing structure - than it is to build a structure to inspire myself and then get invested in that. If that makes any sense.
I mean, it's not as if there's anything wrong with writing fanfic. It's just that I always harboured dreams of being paid for writing fiction and I get further and further from that every day. At least part of it's a confidence issue, I suppose; it's not like I actually do anything sensible like write things and let other people read them very often, or try to submit anything anywhere, or even write original stuff much. And without external input, it's a little hard to have confidence in much ... at least if you're like me and generally your own worst critic. Having been in a gently deepening depressive funk for the last few months probably doesn't help, either. And having been sick the last three weeks probably makes it even worse.
But in the end, at least part of it's to do with the fact that ... well, I am not all that, writer-wise. My style has a certain appeal, but not a particularly wide-ranging one. I have no poetry. I have a very good ear for dialogue but a very bare-bones look at descriptive narrative. It doesn't help that I don't actually like flowery, poetic prose very often. I am probably the textbook definition of 'prosaic' in that regard; give me enough description to draw me a picture that I can colour in with my own imagination, give me characters that I can believe in, and above all, give me what happened, and I'm happy. Make me wade through a ball pit of beautiful translucent soap-bubble prose to get to the bits of the story I want, and I will inevitably grow bored and skip over the painstakingly poetic narrative until I find the plot. I'm not saying that all poetic narrative is bad, by the way. It's just not what I like. And because I don't appreciate it and don't believe in it, I can't write it. Maybe I have a skewed view of the sort of fiction I write in terms of what sells, but a lot of the success stories I've been hearing come from those who use words like a paintbrush, whereas I tend to use mine like a camera. Both are art forms, but a camera shows you what's there through the eye of the person taking the picture, whereas a paintbrush can show you anything and relies on texture and style as much as lighting and angle and colour or lack thereof.
Of course, a lot of this could just be the mood talking. It's a little hard not to be self-defeatist in my current situation. There's the job thing, about which I have bitched at length. I don't get out much and I don't talk to enough people, which in and of itself is a vicious cycle - I don't talk to people, thus I get lonely and depressed and no fit company for anyone, thus I talk to people even less and so on and so on. There's getting the brush-off from disinterested medical personnel to whom I turn for help, which is to the self-esteem what a round of buckshot is to a balloon animal. However much I try to make with the seasonal festivities on my own, the fact is that I'm not entirely looking forward to a Christmas on my own as anything but a two-day reprieve from the job. I'm tired, I'm sick, I'm stressed and I am struggling to find things I'm looking forward to. If I want optimism, I have to make it myself, and finding the energy to do so is hard.
Also, I cannot find my cellphone or my iPod. I thought they might have fallen out of my handbag at the office, but no luck. The only other option is that they fell out of my handbag at the cafe were I had lunch yesterday. If so, I can only hope that the people at the next table handed them in to the waitresses, or that the waitress found them, and that they're sitting behind the counter waiting for me when I pop in at lunchtime today to ask about it. If not ... well, shit. The commute is miserable without my music and that phone, while cheap as all hell, is brand fucking new, and I don't want to have to pass out yet another number change.
Fuck it. I don't like being all blue and miserable and depressed. I am going to get some work done, have another cup of coffee and think story. Maybe it'll be fanfic, maybe not. Maybe no one will give a shit about it, but I will. Maybe I will never make money from the writing, but if I find the enjoyment in it again, that won't matter. I am going to drag myself out of this mood, damnit! Though I'll admit that it'd be a lot easier to do so if I could just be less sick. But the lurgy will pass eventually, I'm sure, even if I do get the brush-off by senior nurse specialists at the walk-in clinic and have to slog through it the hard way.
This too shall pass. I will keep telling myself that until it does.