The Worst Enemy to Creativity

"The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." ~ Sylvia Plath.

Hi, guys.

I read this inspiring post Sunday and wanted to share. It's called What If Your Biggest Naysayer Is Yourself?

This is a huge struggle for me personally. Internally, I am always dealing with these kinds of thoughts while I'm writing or editing a book. They're the kind that say what I write will never be good enough... The kind that kind that tell me I'm going to fail... The kind that tell me to quit now while I'm ahead.

They are insidious and hurtful and they kill my creativity, like Ms. Plath points out above. That quote of hers has always resonated with me deeply... maybe I should frame it and stick in on the wall above my desk.

Self-doubt. Fear. Sense of worthlessness.

In 2012, I'm not going to let those thoughts stop me from writing.

Does anybody else have an inner critic like mine?

Overthinking It

Yesterday I was reading a book, and I had a small epiphany. It amused me, and I thought I'd share.

I've been overthinking this writing thing in some ways.

See, I want my books to be WOW and DIFFERENT and SPARKLES OF GENIUS. I want people to read them and be blown away by their insight and depth. I want critics to weep at the beauty of my prose. Weep, I tell you.

So I sit down to write, and I have all those thoughts and hopes and aspirations piled in the back of my mind like a mountain of bricks. And I type, "The man entered the room and saw the bird."

I stop and examine this sentence. Will it make my readers WEEP WITH THE JOY OF ITS LYRICAL BEAUTY? Hmmm. Unlikely. Perhaps I should reword it. It's too plain, too frank, too straightforward, too boring. Readers don't want entered and birds! Too simple! Not enough descriptors!

Back to square one. The new sentence reads: "The young man stepped nervously into the blank-walled space and gazed at the canary." I stop again and read. Ack, I've used adverbs, adjectives! Is it purple prose? It looks pretty purple to me. Granted, it is more ... complicated. Will complicated make readers weep? (Maybe, but for all the wrong reasons?) The voice is weird. It sounds old. Is that how my writing voice sounds? Do I even know what my writing voice is? This one feels pretentious.

I consider the sentence. I have read that using one word instead of two strengthens the writing. I rewrite the sentence again. "The man tiptoed into the room and stared at the canary." Is this good enough?

It needs more. That is spare and brisk and good enough, but will. it. make. them. weep? I gnaw at my nails. I stare at the screen. I try again.

"The man ran into the room, gasping for breath. He scanned the room for the canary, freezing when he saw it."

"The man scrambled for the door, his gaze sweeping the room for the bird."

And really, this could go on and on, couldn't it? I could write this sentence a million different ways, with a million different shades of emotion and implication. I can become creatively paralyzed by it.

Imagine I spend thirty minutes on this sentence. Giving up in exhaustion, I put down my laptop and pick up a literary masterpiece that has awards plastered all over the cover. My eye falls on this sentence:

"The man entered the room and saw the bird."

* dies *

No, but really. I had a moment like that, and it occurred to me that I somehow, unconsciously, feel that I need to reach this unobtainable standard. I feel like every word has to SPARKLE and MAGIC and DAZZLE in some mystical way, like ordinary words just aren't good enough or something. I don't really know what I'm reaching for, but it isn't there. As I told my husband yesterday, in desperation, yelling loudly:

"All I have to tell this story with are WORDS! WORDS THAT TALK ABOUT THINGS! I need more than that!"

He had a good laugh.

Now, don't misunderstand me. I'm not trying to bash wordsmithing. I think there are better, clearer, stronger ways to word things. I think some words are a stronger choice than others. I think prose can be sloppy, or purple, or weak, or lazy. I think all telling and no showing is generally a mistake.

But at the same time, I'm trying to keep myself from becoming paralyzed when I write. I'm telling myself that I don't have to make every sentence a tiny kingdom of philosophical musings. It's okay to say things simply sometimes, because complexity in a story is not due merely to the structure of my sentences or the level of my vocabulary.

Just something I'm pondering.

What Scares You About Writing?

News and things

I'm planning on starting work again on my novel. Actually, scratch that. I'm planning on starting work on three of them. Two are re-writes and one is in a stalled-out first draft. These are three projects I feel extremely passionate about and I want to see them all finished.

The hard part right now is deciding which one to pick first.

Sometimes I really wish I could just ASK all the agents--Would you want to request pages for this plot concept? Because I have twenty more if nobody's interested in this one. But you can't do that. Danggit.

Oh, in other (completely unrelated) news, the kitties are getting along famously now. I'm extremely relieved--I'd been reading too many horror stories about neurotic cats that never adjust to the companion adopted to keep them company. But our sweet little cats love each other. They share a food bowl and spend hours snuggling and licking faces. It's been a little over a week, and I don't think either of them remembers that they ever lived without the other.

* pauses for a collective awwww *

The scary part about writing

For me, the hardest part of writing is that fear of failure. When I dream up a story, I see it in my head. Not the whole thing with every detail and every word and every plot twist neatly wrapped up, but the general shape and beautiful, sharp little fragments and snapshots and the FEEL and TASTE and AURA of the story. It's like an addicting mental perfume and I am just in love with it and blown away by it as it comes together. Then when the time comes to do the writing part, I freeze.

What if I write it and it isn't any good? What if I can't capture the things in my head with words? What if I don't know what I'm trying to say?

What if.

I really wish I had some magical comfort to give myself about this. I don't really know how to combat this fear, except for in two ways.

1) I believe it was Robin McKinley who first put me straight about this. On her blog, she wrote about this fear and she said essentially that the story will never be as perfect on paper as it is in your head. So get over that and just write it. So I'm giving myself permission to be a human being and not have a perfect manuscript the first time, or the second, or maybe even the final time. Kind of a scary thought ... but freeing too. If freaking Robin McKinley can say something like that, I feel comforted. Because The Blue Sword was very nearly the perfect book.

2) I read this quote today, and it made me smile. It also made me think. It was by Nic Alderton, and it was pretty long, but he basically said and I'm paraphrasing here, "Think of a story and write it down. What's going to get in your way? Not thinking it up and not writing it down."

So . . .

So I can't overcome failure by hiding or wishing I would just sit down and write a perfect, polished manuscript with one snap of my fingers. I can't not fail by never doing it because I'm scared I won't do a good job. Not trying is the worst kind of failure. I may not get these books right the first time (*giggles morosely* technically one of them is either the 4th or 5th re-write of its respective book, so ... definitely not), but I can do my best.

And at the end of the day, that's all I can really expect from myself.