Ever write a bunch of crap?

topic posted Tue, April 10, 2007 - 2:38 PM by  Stacie
Share/Save/Bookmark
Advertisement
Or to be more specific, do you ever finish a project only to become convinced it is utter garbage?

How do you stop yourself from stoking the furnace with your manuscripts?
posted by:
Stacie
Nevada
Advertisement
Advertisement
  • Re: Ever write a bunch of crap?

    Tue, April 10, 2007 - 2:51 PM
    For me, the top drawer of my cabinet by my computer works well. It's almost a given that at some point either during or after the writing process I am going to consider it unmitigated tripe. But I do find that if I let it sit off to the side and get to working immediately on something else, that the gestation period helps. I can divorce myself from the pain and anguish of the writing process...as well as the doubts, reservations and fears...and come back to it with a fresh eye and renewed sense of hope.

    But think about it this way. If we wrote the perfect book or story, there'd be no point ever writing anything again, because we'd never be able to duplicate that perfection. Part of the craft is wrestling with our own shortcomings as writers and continually looking for new and better ways to articulate our views and observations. That's our life. That's our art. Feeling like what we've written is shitty is part of the bargain. It just means that you are questioning yourself and pushing to revise what you've written into the best, most polished, final possible.
  • Re: Ever write a bunch of crap?

    Tue, April 10, 2007 - 4:05 PM
    I love my crap.
    I consider much of it unsalvageable. I keep it anyway. Some of it is 35 years old.
    I've got some stuff from 20+ years ago that I might be able to cannibalize from some day. I also keep it to remind me of where I've been. Sometimes it teaches me about my patterns, much in the way that my journal does.
    I've got more recent work that I think is salvageable with a honking major rewrite. It's in the "deep freeze" (i.e., a plastic file drawer), waiting patiently for when I'm done doing other things.

    I deal a little bit with love-of-crap in my article "'Ouch!': Writing Through Upheaval," originally published in _Empire: For the SF Writer_ in 1985 and now posted on my website at:

    home.earthlink.net/~emalcoh...html#ouch

    In particular the section "Love Your Mutants."

Recent topics in "Fiction Writing"