Into the Fire

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Seriously?

 

                         
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Can we ever look back at ourselves and smile?

Writing is serious business. Those of us who've committed a significant portion of our lives to doing it in novel form will tell you it's no easy ride. While it can be astoundingly fun, it can also be difficult, tear-jerking, vacant, and even humiliating.

Some authors come off as joyless artists chained to their talent and desperate for their heart to be set free in words.

Others seem to flit through it like it's pure pleasure, incomprehensible fun all the time, and about half easy to accomplish writing story after story after story.

Most of us reside somewhere in between extremes – except at certain times during the construction of a story when our characters turn mute and vacuous and refuse to enter into the games. Or when they're so busy cracking jokes when the mood is dour that we're embarrassed to have created them. Or when they're as shallow as the kiddie pool, and we want to exterminate them like hideous bugs.

But, seriously speaking, can we look back at our early creations and smile at some of what we wrote? And I don't mean laugh. I mean look back with a hint of pleasure at our writing chops barely exposing themselves in a few rather brilliant paragraphs here and there that we still truly do like.

To keep going in this rather uncooperative venture, I think we have to be able to enjoy our work. To see the gemstones shining through the rocks. If we can't like our work, who will?

 

Father, apart from you, we can do nothing. Nothing. Seriously. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.   

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5 responses to “Seriously?”

  1. BK Jackson Avatar
    BK Jackson

    That’s a tough line. As a person who is naturally very hard on myself, I have to work to find that balance. I will periodically go back through some things I’ve wrote and it will bring a smile to my face when I read portions of it. But then there’s the other side. THe one that says stuff like “Well the opening chapter started out strong but look–you have to bring the other chapters up to par,” etc.
    But I do enjoy what I write even if I don’t like every word and sentence. I couldn’t NOT like it. People give all kinds of reasons for writing. My main one is to write what I can’t find on the shelves. So if I don’t like it, then there’s no point in going on because I’m wasting a whole lot of my life otherwise.

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  2. Brenda Anderson Avatar
    Brenda Anderson

    Good question, Nicole. I do like my writing, but there’s always room for improvement. I wish I could write with more of a literary bent as that’s what I love to read, but when I put pen to paper, that’s not what comes out. Still, that give me something to strive for.
    I wonder, when an author doesn’t care for their writing, if that tone is conveyed to the reader.

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  3. Nicole Avatar
    Nicole

    It’s plausible to me that the wailings of unsatisfied writers are false pride. A security blanket. Like saying, “I know I’m not as good as the ‘greats’, so don’t anyone else think I don’t know it.”
    We all hate portions of our stuff. We suffer sometimes from the notion that, no, I can’t write, what am I thinking?, who do I think I am continuing on this writing journey?, etc. I think those are common to the occupation. But in the end, as Brenda J. said, what’s the point of writing another single word if we don’t like what we write? And, like she said too, yeah, I wish every stinkin’ word was precise and exact to convey the moment, but I’m not a Dean Koontz-type who labors and labors over every paragraph. (And they all said, “No kidding, you’re not!”)
    The ugly truth is it will never be perfect and we will never be completely satisfied. So we make it the best we can. We laugh at our mistakes and we silently, secretly, roll our eyes at others’ faux pas, and we continue to do what is meaningful to us in surrender to our Lord.
    And as Bren said, we continue to upgrade, to work on making it better, more satisfying.
    But taking ourselves too seriously and not appreciating the process of graduating to the next level? Perhaps that’s just too much focus on ourselves with no appreciation for what the Lord is continually doing in each one of us.

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  4. Jessica Thomas Avatar
    Jessica Thomas

    After writings copious amounts of bad poetry during middle school and high school, I finally started to like what I wrote somewhere around my sophomore or junior year of college. That’s when I started to be able to look at it 3 months, 6 months later and still enjoy and sometimes even be impressed with a poem I wrote.
    Coming at this novel writing gig with a poet’s mindset is brutal. I want every word to sing, I want it to be perfectly placed…I want the rhythm to be just right, etc. etc. However, compare the length of a poem to the length to a novel!
    At some point I realized…”I figured out the poetry thing, I figured out the short story thing, surely I will eventually figure out the novel thing”…and I’m finally feeling like I have some control over the form rather than vice versa, but it’s taken exponentially longer than mastering the poem or the short story.
    Simply because of the number of words in a novel, I know I will probably never totally “arrive” in this lifetime…I’ll never get to that point with a novel where I think, “It’s perfect! I don’t want to change a single word or punctuation mark.”
    The idea of putting something out into the world in which I haven’t carefully considered every word (5 or 6 times) is difficult for me, because I am a control freak. I’m coming to the realization that my inability to control each word in a novel has slowed my growth process. I’ve avoided writing because of the weight of my own expectations. But. I’m getting there. Live and learn.

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  5. Nicole Avatar
    Nicole

    I think it’s wise to be studious, dedicated, and driven when creating. However, I also think it’s arrogant to think we humans can create perfection. Who are we trying to impress? Ourselves? Our peers? Who? Certainly not God, for heaven’s sake. He looks at our hearts, and he knows exactly what we’re capable of since he instilled the talent and desire. He knows our limitations better than we do.
    There’s a place we must get to (IMO) where we say, “This is it, I think. God, this is pretty much it. Hope it honors you because that’s what’s most important of all to me.”
    Beyond that, what can we really do?
    Indeed, live and learn, Jess.

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