I must say that I'm enjoying sharing writing and stories with other people. I am loving getting links to industry blogs and things like that. I've even started to follow two (yes just two) myself.
The fact that I'm even following two is a huge deal to me. There's a lot of talk sometimes when people discuss literature or publishing that makes me nervous. I think it's that artist within me, the one that refuses to become a sell out, but also secretly wishes we could make a living doing something like this. Because then we could do what ever we wanted and write it off as a learning experience that would be helpful to the craft. A trip to Hawaii would them become an awesome tax write off. (Okay, I'm sure it's not that simple, but my mind is more than half in the clouds most of the time and only recently became infused with a little more reality.)
It can only be a good thing to learn about all aspects of something you'd like to do. Know what to expect and know what to do, and, if you can, make some connections while you're at it. Discussing it can't be all bad either, pondering the significance of the way things are, the way they can be, literature versus genre, levels of snobbishness, etc.
But I don't like it. Talk about categorization makes me particularly nervous. I rally against them, my one cause in a world I am very much not a part of. And secretly, I think it's because I don't know where I fit in, and also because I don't like the idea of fitting in somewhere.
Which is weird, in a way, I guess. Wouldn't it be best to know where you fit? To know that there are others out there like you toiling away at the same kind of story? Don't most people want to connect and find their community, find those other people so they can share and compare experiences and ideas?
And I find that, no, I don't like any of that. It's not that I need to be special or unique. It's that I don't like being pigeon holed. If you have something that's sci-fi, then there will be people who will say, "No, you can't do this and you can't do that." Or worse, people will say you "shouldn't" do this and you "should" do that. This is the stuff I don't like. This is where I feel issues can crop up.
And there's also the fact that I am just slightly anti-social. Things like talking about games, I'm perfectly fine with that. Talking about my writing though is completely different. I still don't talk about it out loud. It just feels weird. I don't talk about characters or story lines, and I don't ask questions unless I'm doing some bit of research or something and someone else knows more about something than me.
Maybe it's just me, but reading about all this stuff seems to make me put strange pressures on myself or makes me feel like I'm not a serious writer because I'm not more involved and because the one really good story (well, stories really, but world story) I'm throwing out as a Sims story which is categorized with a stamp that says "not serious at all."
So I can't help wondering what I'm doing and what do I plan to do. My head has all sorts of questions she turns over constantly, but then my gut (the voice of reason oddly) pets my head and says, "trust me." She whispers that thinking is bad, and I need to stay away from bad influences. And that I need to just write.
Just write, get it all out without thinking or worrying about things that I really don't care about at the moment. Just keep doing what I do without worrying about what's been done (unless we're completely stealing someone else's idea).
And when the time is right, we'll know what to do. If I manage to make a product that I one day want to sell, then I need to trust in myself and my abilities. For the past ten years, I've been working in retail. Six of those years, I was a gift shop girl who had to learn how to make sales pitches. And over this past year, I've had use that skill making sales pitches to sell apartments to possible tenants and to sell possible good tenants to management.
Seriously, I know how to sell things, and I know how to sell myself. Oh, that sounds bad, like I'm selling out or something. What I mean is that I have trust and faith in myself. Even on the bad days when I hate myself or hate my writing, I know that those moods will pass, and I will continue doing what I've always liked to do.
5 comments:
I'm just making it up as I go, but I like to think it's what we do differently that will make us stand out and get noticed when we get to that point. From what I've read, you don't have to worry about genre, but your agent and publishers do.
I felt in the same bind as you for a time, before I learned that women's fiction *is* allowed to have male narrators and not-so-happy endings. There are certain expectations of a genre, but you can also break them if you do it well. You can cross genres too. And in the end, if you've written a really great story, it all ends up on the mainstream shelves anyway.
It's always been about what shelf your book will end up on in the bookstore, but lately, there's all this talk of digital, and soon there might not be shelves at all.
I don't like the "sim-story" stamp either, and I've had whole arguments with my hubby about how what I'm writing is not fan-fiction. He doesn't get it. And hell, if I can't convince my own husband to get it, what hope do I have of convincing anyone else?
I've thought on this, many times before (and this is obviously a big hang-up I have of my own), and there isn't really any way I can think of to legitimize what we're doing with these stories. Except to turn it full-text at the end, and sell it as a book. That isn't exactly what I'd want either though, because the way some of these stories work *with* the pictures is a very special thing. But in the end, I have these stories that I put just as much energy and love and passion into as my "serious" writing, but they're kind of destined not to go anywhere but my blog.
I think you're right though, trusting yourself and your story is key here. (Need to tell myself this right now, as I have a couple short stories sitting around doing nothing.) It's finding the right fit that's the hardest. A lot of the rejections I get say the same thing - "We enjoyed this, it was great, but it's not right for us." He's just not that into you - like dating, lol!
Or well, it's useful to tell myself these things anyway, because what's my only other option? To tell myself that I actually do suck, and quit?
And somehow this comment became all about me and my issues, lol!
It would make the most sense to me that your agent and publishers are the ones who need to worry. They are the ones who have to sell the book, but then I see issues with that. If they read something they like, but they can't easily fit it into a genre, that makes their job harder, and that would make me wonder if they wouldn't either pass on the story or edit the story to fit into some box.
lol, I swear I'm breaking out into hives with the genre talk!
You know, I'm half starting to think that going digital won't be so bad. I mean, digital copies are cheap, and I think it would be much easier for someone to promote a digital copy of a book from a new writer that can sell for $3 and most of that being profit I'd think. There would be issues of course; I know it isn't that simple, but still.
But I don't think books will ever disappear. (Like the Atari. Did you know that there are still people programming Atari 2600 games and burning them to carts to be played on actual 2600 and 7800 systems? Carts are usually like $20! Sorry, slight tangent!)
I can completely see where you're coming from with the entire Sim story stamp thing. That's another reason why I prefer not to think about it, and just do what I like to do. At least for us working on this, sharing it with people, it's like an experiment. You can immediately see people's reactions, see if they have any trouble understanding, and what they have trouble with. I'm trying to use that to factor into how I would write a "normal" story.
The fit is the hard part. Yes, you have to trust yourself. (And hey, if those rejects are more than just form letters, I'd be a bit flattered if I were you. Wow how backwards is that?)
lol, don't worry. That's sort of what this blog is. Just a good place to dump stuff.
Dude.
We're the same person.
Hi, soul twin.
*waves* I know, it's like looking in a mirror sometimes, isn't it? I'm not even joking.
Your gut has got it right... So why is it so hard for us to listen to it sometimes?
Don't mind me - I've tied myself up in knots about the whole writing thing at the moment. Gut says write, head says no, heart says OMG Not in public!
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