~~ verbose rambling on why narcissism is essential for a writer

[reenka]

    earthquake1906 was all "yeay" about my comment on liking/enjoying my own writing, and it just occurred to me... you know, if i didn't write for my own pleasure, i don't know -what- i would write for. 'cause no one's going to hold (my) hand all the time, and sometimes -no one- says -anything- and if i didn't love my own words, i would go -mad- being afraid that i suck a lot of ass. like, every single time i do well and people say, "great job, you rock", it does help, but that goes away. it goes away and with every new story i'm afraid i don't have what it takes to interest anyone all over again. there is simply no way i could write at all, if i wasn't my own number one fan. i mean, i suppose it's also that i can't help it and i write because it comes out, but if i really really thought i sucked, i don't see why i'd keep going. if i didn't love it, why would i keep wanting to inflict such self-loathing upon myself? i'm sure i would stop.

is this rare? i mean, i know from my own experience that even when people absolutely gush, it just doesn't sink in. maybe that's just me. but unless you believe it to start with, you're not going to believe it-- or maybe there are people who are more susceptible to others' opinions, maybe. i'm not one of those people. others' opinions -matter-, but they don't -change- me.

you hear about it when it comes to characters-- that writers are in love with their own characters. and i suppose i am-- i'm in love with them too-- but even so, i'm in love with the way i see them, the way they come out. i -want- to be true to my "real" vision, i want to write as well as i possibly could. and i suppose on a bad day, i'd say that's because presently, i think i suck. but on a good day, it's just because i want more of a good thing. writing isn't really something you could reliably market-test, and yet it's hard not to think every comment counts as a positive vote and you need some threshold (5 comments, 15 comments, 1 rec and 10 comments, 20 comments-- i've never had 20 comments, does that mean i'm not as good as any person who does?).

anyway, i'm just guessing that (hopefully) we all love our own writing. some of it's better than other parts, but overall, the only person who's going to be a reliable audience to satisfy is yourself, and if you can't satisfy yourself, who -can- you satisfy? people call a lot of fanfiction "masturbatory fiction"-- and really, there's some truth to that. and what good is masturbation without pleasure? you don't have to orgasm every time, i guess, but if you get give yourself the tingles, you're really not doing it right, are you?
    . . .i'm not saying self-love is the be-all and end-all. i'm just saying it's like a life-support system. the ultimate goal is to touch someone else, to make someone else shiver with pleasure or pain or whatever through your work, to make someone think and feel. but you can't depend on that. you can't guarantee you will know-- lots of people are touched and say nothing. they don't feel the need to touch you back. maybe they think it sucks or maybe they're too busy or maybe they haven't even read it or maybe they don't know what to say or maybe they can't express themselves well know to say anything. all you can know is, this is what's inside you, and you better get used to loving it 'cause no one is ever really going to love it -for- you.

if you think of yourself as a writer (as i do), you're stuck with this style of yours, this mind of yours. you can change the resulting writing, but your relatioship with it will most likely stay stable. one day they'll be swooning all over you and the next they will seemingly forget you even existed (though this is a huge exaggerration of my own experience). audiences are so fickle.
    i know there are two camps here: people who say they -hate- the process of writing, hate the -effort-, hate the blank page, dislike editing, dislike the strain of choosing the right word-- and then there are people who love it (like me). i'm rather sorry for the former sort. what a horrible life that is!

in particular, take the silly thing i posted in the middle of the night last night. it gave me pleasure to write it-- i enjoyed it and i was nervous to see if it was just me who found it fun to read as well as write. did i manage to share my pleasure? and in the end, i did get two wonderful comments (which means my wibbling is minimal), but my lasting impression is, "well, i had fun doing that, maybe i should do more". i hadn't written in a week or two, and i was missing writing. i was missing the pleasure, the rush of it, the amazement i feel that i can construct pretty things. it makes me feel better about myself. i feel less like a total dork. i think i'm one of those people whom i admire so-- and it's just like afterglow. in the heady rush right after having written it, i don't need anyone to -allow- me to feel pleasure by complimenting me. i just feel it-- i feel happy. i've gotten what i wanted-- i've written it.

validation is very important, but i can live without it. what i -can't- live without is that basic pleasure in the process. i need to trust myself-- trust my enjoyment of my writing, the seriousness of my relationship with it, my judgement of it in general.

i see other writers i completely adore (probably semi-jokingly) exclaim that they feel like giving up the pen at the glorious writing of their friends. i feel that. my own sensitivity to writing in general is a double-edged sword. it means i can enjoy my own writing (having the sensitivity of a reader), as well as, naturally, swoon over others'. and truthfully, i could never adore my own work like i can theirs. i don't know what they'd missed as intimately, i don't know what they could've done better, where they didn't quite express what they wanted, where they cheated and used default imagery, where they were just bullshitting. it's always much more fresh and new and startling to someone else. so i mean, it's definitely an effort-- here you are, and you worship these other people's writing, how do you still manage to love your own without resorting to letting other people love it for you?

it's all in the process. the love comes back as soon as you write again. it's funny that way. as soon as you let it in, it swamps everything and suddenly you realize why you fell in love to begin with. because there are just all these pretty things in your mind, and in a way you pick them up off the ground and keep them, like pretty stones. someday, someday it'll be easy, and i'll love others' work as much as i want to, and it will only add and never subtract anything from myself. for now, i trust the dependable rush of pleasure that writing gives me, so different and yet so close to reading. i am addicted, i am totally possessed by it. hm. maybe that's why i'm so verbose, i don't know ><

Comments

[sarahtales.livejournal.com]

I don't know... I love my *characters.* and I love writing. and I love thinking about writing.
and now and then, I'll read some of my work and go 'yes, I did it, yay, well done me!'
But that's rare...
Unfortunately, most of the time I read and go 'Oh boy, do I suck. oh man, that didn't sound lame in my head.'
which is very sad, so kudos to you m'darling!

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

hee. well, i guess i should've made more clear that i was only talking about the -process-. it's like... the process is tied with the resulting enjoyment, for me. i enjoy writing and then i look back and it (usually) comes out sort of smooth and i can definitely see the bad points, but i still have that pleasure in the poetics of it. maybe that's it? it's mostly poetics, the flow of words, the way they're put together, the way i say things.

it's not really that i feel i've -accomplished- what i meant to accomplish. (then again, if i focused on -that-, i'd get really depressed 'cause i think i can count on the fingers of one hand the times i've done that). so it's not a "oh, this fits the ideal", sort of thing, and more an innate enjoyment of the way it -is-, regardless of the writerly thoughts surrounding it. that's why i was trying to say i can be a -reader- of my own writing (though not as well as someone who isn't me). i can just read it without thinking about the technical details that went into writing it.

maybe it's just an ability to dissociate ><;
*giggles* 'cause if you think of your writing as a writer-- then i'm right there with you. i'm always completely convinced that i suck-- it's never good enough. still pleasant though. *laughs* man, that's almost a blatant personality split, right there~:) reader!reena and writer!reena -.-

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Quite a lot of the time, I hate the process of writing. Writing VM is often like pulling teeth, because there are so many scenes where I know what should be happening, but actually writing it is difficult. I find myself wibbling about the basics of things, like 'wah, too much mention of physical stuff alongside dialogue? not enough? is my dialogue even realistic?'

The only time when reading my friends' stuff makes me want to put down my pen is when they're writing something similar to me, or sex. Because fics are pretty unique, really. I mean, I doubt there's really going to be another Kronos-does-San-Francisco fic out there, though that's an extreme example.

Sex scenes are something I read and then think 'fuck, I could never do this; there's such a limited amount of words you can work with, and so many others have done it so better'.

Which is probably why I doubt I'll ever write a real Highlander fic. :(

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

hmm. i guess i should've made more clear that my enjoyment is of the language itself rather than of plot or pacing or characterization. mostly because while the sentence construction and word-choice are vaguely conscious, the characterization and plot are just vague ideas in my head, so i don't really tend to push them into any particular direction, which makes it all a question of "flowing" or "not flowing".
if it's not flowing, then definitely, it's not very fun. sometimes there are things one doesn't want to write-- they're just the necessary stuff, or the stuff that isn't coming from any intense inspiration but has to be there for the good of the plot. in that case, i procrastinate like mad and avoid it and let the fic languish. it's still kind of fun to do it once i start, but again, that's just the language element, the sentence construction.

and so i mean-- i usually wind up comparing my poetics with others', the way things read overall, how impressed i am with them, how brilliant and unique they seem-- not a direct plot-based comparison or anything.
thamiris did ask sometime recently, how there could be anything new and interesting in smut, where every possibility had probably been explored by now-- and i just think it's that question of enjoyment, of writing what you want to see, writing for yourself, trying to please yourself.

maybe it won't be the fic for anyone else, but you can always write a fic for -you-, that does what -you- want, and even if it doesn't, it could be -fun- writing about duncan & methos kissing etc., because you love the subject, you know?
you've said before that you write for an audience, that this is all supposed to -do- something, and i guess that's where the problem would be, there. i mean, porn in particular is just self-indulging and hedonism. while you can't really be all that innovating, you can do an old thing well. and a lot of people (most people) aren't -looking- for innovating (are you?) in smut, they're just looking to be given for they already want. and they're not that sensitive about word-choice, either.

it's not all about new tricks, you know? sometimes it's about old tricks done well. like with card tricks. we've all seen the whole, "i've found a card behind your ear" a million times, but each particular performance is unique because if little cues like the time of day, your mood, that particular magician, etc. even if you re-wrote someone else's smut scene directly-- or rewrote a story directly (like in the remix challenge), something would be worthwhile and special about it, 'cause it's all you anyway, just the way you can't help but come through in your words. and you know, if you let go of the need to succeed in all ways, that can also be good enough-- pleasing other people even if you're not surprising them, and being yourself in your writing~:)

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Ah, but Duncan and Methos wouldn't stop at kissing. ;)

If the plot's different, the language will necessarily be different, won't it? It will be unique, and thus hard to compare.

It's 5:41am. I have already had two mugs of tea with two teabags each in. My exam is in 8 hours and 19 minutes. *PANIC*

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

awww. *soothes*
you can do it. if anything, you can always skim and skip and it's amazing how much better one remembers things when one's desperately trolling for facts. that, or forgets everything completely >.<;; i've -had- my exam (though not my final). so right now i'm like, "i have to do -moooore- work, but waaah i think my brain is fried". if brain fries, unwind and think about something else for 10-15 minutes. either that, or accept that this is hell but at least by this time tomorrow, it'll all be over~:)

and well, yes, they'd do more than kiss. i was trying to encourage you to take baby steps ;)
*laughs*

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

Wah. It's Maths. I can't bullshit in Maths. And I'm really damn good at bullshitting, too. God, I remember my Irish Lit exam.

Ritheann rithim sonanta ceolmhar tríd an dán, agus cruthaíonn sé sin mothúcháin síochána agus áthais in intinn an léitheora.

Random poetic commentary on rhythm that works frickin' wonders in Irish Leaving Cert exams. I just made that one up on the spot for demonstration purposes, but it'd probably work for any happy poem. (seeing as most LC poems are sad, not so much, but hey.) The charm is that the structure of the answer makes it seem like I'm a native speaker.

A pleasant musical rhythm runs through the poem, and this creates feelings of peace and happiness in the mind of the reader.

But um. I cannot bullshit cubic equations, finite extension fields, and fucking solvability by radicals.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

*meeps*
*feels your pain*
even -seeing- the -words- "solvability by radicals" makes my brain hurt. *laughs*
usually i don't bother cramming for math tests. either i've learned it sometime during the time i was in class, or it's pointless to force my brain to expand that much that quickly -.-
best thing with math (to me) is to just get enough sleep and stretch your brain a little so it's more willing to work in that precise way that's rather unnatural (for me).

although it could be different for people who are not me~:)

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

And doubtless if I had attended the lectures I would have done exactly that. As it is, I'm trying to learn the syllabus from scratch in one morning. *kills self*

I misspelled 'soineanta'. So sad.

[yourpoison.livejournal.com]

*hugs you*
I AM NOT ALONE!!! ahahahaah. ahem.
<-- hysterical
i am so with you in that boat.
because man oh man, i haven't gone to lectures much in my psych class. *sigh*
ahahaha. so i'm sort if the same position (though i have more time). 700 pages, man. 700 pages.

a-yup. -.-

[lasultrix.livejournal.com]

You should go to bed. It's 3am where you are, right?

God, I hate where I am in college. To think I used to get mad at myself for not getting A1s. I wish I'd just dropped out and reapplied when I knew I wanted to change course.

But no. Instead, I'm just failing first year. Much better. I'm only missing so many lectures because I know they wouldn't help anyway.

8am. I have to get offline.