It's all part of the artist's ego. You go around thinking you're pretty good, and then you have to look at your own work with the eye of the critic who will be evaluating it. Suddenly you see every flaw, magnified to gigantic size. Now you see the truth: The writing is completely dull except when it's being stupid, and then it's evenly split between stupid and dull.
It's like seeing a tiny zit on a day when you really want to look good. It can make you nuts. If you have the time you may go at it, and soon enough instead of an unnoticeable zit, you have an actual injury on your face.
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| I wish they made these for manuscripts. |
I've never been very good at pep-talking myself; the best I can do at times like that is trust that if I thought something of mine was of good quality in the past, that my judgment -- honed over years in every end of the wordsmithing business -- cannot be completely wrong 100% of the time.
The main problem with the current project is not that I'm not good enough for it (we'll put that question aside) but that the more I found out about it, the less I seemed to be the person they were looking for. In which case, they could think I'm the best composer of words since Watchamuken's talented brother, Imhotstuff, and still have to reject me. I'd be okay with that.
It's a sad truth that all craftsmanship requires devotion, and all devotion requires the attachment of the heart, and the heart and the ego are bound up as one. Love me, love my writing is not the truth, but it always feels like the truth, and that's why writers are so grumpy all the time.
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1 comment:
I used to fancy myself as quite the writer. After all, I majored in English, 8th in class, summa cum laude, yada, yada, yada. I went through a box of old stuff and found some papers I'd written in college, and I literally cringed at the pap I was reading. They gave me summa for this dreck?!?. Good thing I wrote better COBOL or I'd have gone hungry!
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