On today's Write Anything post (my penultimate post for that venerable but soon-to-be-shuttered writing site), I look back on 2012 with some tough questions. Was this year a "Win" with respect to my writing? If so, why? What success tipped it into the win column? Also, what price did I pay for that success? Am I willing to pay that price again?
The King Is Dead... Long Live the King?
===== Feel free to comment on this or any other post.
The King Is Dead... Long Live the King?
===== Feel free to comment on this or any other post.
You put a lot of work into these final posts, Tony. I can feel some of the effort. I'm curious about one thing I didn't feel comfortable asking on the site: what are you doing to combat blogging that you described as "which became more whiny, angst-ridden and superficial than I’d like"? I don't feel your blog became that, but I'm curious what processes you would put into place to combat the urge.
ReplyDeleteInteresting questions, John. I'm glad the blog didn't devolve as much as I'd thought. From my perspective, it wallowed pretty badly, but that's just because I pay a lot of attention to that man behind the curtain. One thing I've made a conscious decision about is just how much of this writerly angst I post here. There have been many blog posts that I ended up either scrapping or not writing.
DeleteAs I took a step back and looked at them, they sounded too much like a third grader whining about how impossibly hard multiplication is when faced with the task of memorizing "3 x 6 = 18", "4 x 8 = 32", etc. In clearer moments, I was appalled at how silly I sounded. It's utter self-censorship to not just say what's on my mind, but the reality is that calculation comes into it, as it does in many matters of communication.
When the inevitable parade of agents and publishers swing by to take a look at this new phenom sweeping the marketplace (Hello, agents and publishers!), I want them to see a confident, reliable, professional writer, not a whiny, fragile, untoward faux prima donna.
Every writer runs into difficulties at various stages of a writing career. Where I'm having trouble isn't necessarily where others would, but then, what I find pretty straightforward might be a serious stumbling block for someone else. To complain about how hard it is does little more than set myself up as an object of ridicule, literally to become ridiculous. I'd like to be taken seriously as a writer; that means sucking it up and getting the job done.