I know. It's the Page-Proof Despair talking. It all looks somehow so flat and clunky and uninteresting when it's in real font-and-format, like the peacock feathers are making me realize that the poor thing was only a rather dilapidated crow to begin with. When in fact it's neither a crow nor a peacock, but a perfectly good story.
All I can tell you is what I told someone else who asked something similar:
It's maybe because sometimes you, like Moses, don't get to go inside the Promised Land. You map the way there, you take people to it, but it's not for you. It's for them, the readers. And because it's not for you, and you don't get to go all the way inside, it never looks quite right to you. But then, that was never its job.
The other person I told this to was Mr. Ford, fwiw. You sound rather like him, at the moment. (Well, except you didn't lard your moan with phrases like "unmitigated crap" and "completely hopeless" and "still speak to me," and the like.)
Not sure that's comforting, but it's what I've got to offer, and therefore it's yours. (And my own stuff always looks better in typescript and stupider in longhand. The mileage, she varies all hither and yon.)
Ah the great and foolish insecurity of writers. :)
I think there's something about seeing it in the form of a "real" story that makes me look around for the kid who's going to point out that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. (My metaphors for this seem to be all about clothing and disguise. How odd.) And I know perfectly well I'm too close to it. But sometimes you have to howl at the moon, even though you know it isn't listening.
The story didn't look nearly so stupid today, which is encouraging.
Because, silly, the view of your writing from inside your brain and the view from out here are different. And the view out here isn't subject to your bouts of moroseness (morosity?), self-doubt, and general orneriness.
I vote for gloating about the "paid" part, which is the place where our roads diverge on the page proofs thing. Maybe that's just me. If I were getting paid, I would definitely gloat.
'Cause it has never tormented them and driven them crazy and tried to injure their wrists and demanded revision and tinkering and made a goddamn bloody nuisance of itself for what seems like an eternity.
That is, they are able to be a more objective about it than you are and see its worth.
Um, that would be one thing published, and seven more in press. All short stories. Oh, and an academic article, but that hardly counts. (I have even less idea of why they published that thing, to be honest.)
Sorry, I'm not nearly as cool as I seem to have made myself sound. :)
No, you still sound cool. After all, you still have things published, which is much better than most of the people who say, "Oh, I'm a writer, only I never have time to write."
In my field, and I would suppose most, articles get sent out to at least 2 anonymous readers with expertise in the field as well as (usually) being prescreened by the journal or volume editors (though sometimes I wonder). No journals of any repute would take things just to fill up the spaces ('gee, we need another 7000 word article for the next issue, what's in the submission pile?') and most of them have operating backlogs of things already approved.
It's not the work or the judgment I'm discounting. The academic article doesn't "count" (which was a bad choice of words to begin with) mostly because I'm no longer interested in following the path on which it is the first stepping stone. It's like a fossil of an evolutionary dead-end.
Uh-huh. That makes sense. I was probably reading too much into this - out of my own highly idiosyncratic experience of the difference between the kind of process my academic articles had to go through and what I suspect is the highly atypical process by which I got 2 short stories published.
Well, it counts, but (a.) (as I said to oursin) it's not representative of anything I'm still interested in--unlike the short stories and (b.) it's not something that most people are going to care to read. Unless you're really into seventeenth-century country house poems or have a mad crush on Andrew Marvell or something.
It's an accomplishment. I'm proud of it. But I also tend to forget about it for long stretches of time.
My sole published story thus far is "Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland," which can be found in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet (http://www.lcrw.net/lcrw/) 11.
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momijizukamori
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no subject
Date: 2003-08-06 01:38 pm (UTC)No reason I can think of.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-06 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-07 06:55 pm (UTC)It's maybe because sometimes you, like Moses, don't get to go inside the Promised Land. You map the way there, you take people to it, but it's not for you. It's for them, the readers. And because it's not for you, and you don't get to go all the way inside, it never looks quite right to you. But then, that was never its job.
The other person I told this to was Mr. Ford, fwiw. You sound rather like him, at the moment. (Well, except you didn't lard your moan with phrases like "unmitigated crap" and "completely hopeless" and "still speak to me," and the like.)
Not sure that's comforting, but it's what I've got to offer, and therefore it's yours. (And my own stuff always looks better in typescript and stupider in longhand. The mileage, she varies all hither and yon.)
no subject
Date: 2003-08-07 07:35 pm (UTC)I think there's something about seeing it in the form of a "real" story that makes me look around for the kid who's going to point out that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. (My metaphors for this seem to be all about clothing and disguise. How odd.) And I know perfectly well I'm too close to it. But sometimes you have to howl at the moon, even though you know it isn't listening.
The story didn't look nearly so stupid today, which is encouraging.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-06 01:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-06 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-06 02:00 pm (UTC)I vote for gloating about the "paid" part, which is the place where our roads diverge on the page proofs thing. Maybe that's just me. If I were getting paid, I would definitely gloat.
no subject
Date: 2003-08-06 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-06 02:29 pm (UTC)That is, they are able to be a more objective about it than you are and see its worth.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2003-08-06 06:32 pm (UTC)The covers are pretty?
Date: 2003-08-06 02:41 pm (UTC)But reading through your bio ... well, if you have lots of stuff published, then you must be doing something right, right? Ergo, buying.
Re: The covers are pretty?
Date: 2003-08-06 05:41 pm (UTC)Sorry, I'm not nearly as cool as I seem to have made myself sound. :)
Re: The covers are pretty?
Date: 2003-08-06 05:50 pm (UTC)Re: The covers are pretty?
Date: 2003-08-07 12:13 am (UTC)Don't diss academic articles
Date: 2003-08-07 06:08 am (UTC)Re: Don't diss academic articles
Date: 2003-08-07 08:49 am (UTC)Re: Don't diss academic articles
Date: 2003-08-07 09:09 am (UTC)Re: The covers are pretty?
Date: 2003-08-07 08:52 am (UTC)It's an accomplishment. I'm proud of it. But I also tend to forget about it for long stretches of time.
*waves hand in the air* I have a guess
Date: 2003-08-06 05:57 pm (UTC)I'm guessing here, since I haven't read what you've written beyond your journal, but I'm assuming it is of a similar nature.
(so, um, what have you written and where can I find it?)
I know I'm guessing right though, and so I now demand a prize. I love prizes.
Re: *waves hand in the air* I have a guess
Date: 2003-08-06 06:31 pm (UTC)My sole published story thus far is "Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland," which can be found in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet (http://www.lcrw.net/lcrw/) 11.
Re: *waves hand in the air* I have a guess
Date: 2003-08-06 09:46 pm (UTC)That would be the award-nominated "Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland."
And people buy what you write because you tell good stories well and make them care about your characters.