On Being Proud of Your Work

You can be proud of a piece of shit—just look at our parents.

I'm not a writer you should seek writing advice from. I'm not even a person you should seek advice on anything from. I am whacked beyond belief but have a decent portrayal of sanity, though my acting falters on most days. There is no saving me, so I float in the abyss, sending up whatever messages I can from this strange basement.

One of those messages is pride.

Ho boy.

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INSTALLMENT 3 | WRITING

ON BEING PROUD OF YOUR WORK

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Everything I've ever written is shit. These very words, the ones being typed now, are about trash in my eyes. It's not their fault: their fucking words! The failure is my own for not constructing them better. I want them to be good words, and if you will allow my narcissism a moment, I'd like for them to be great words—but we of mediocre quality should fear taking ourselves too seriously. At the end of the day, all we can do is aspire to be good writers.

A question for you. Does being mediocre, even bad, bar you from being proud of your work? Is it possible to be proud of muddled prose, of contrived dialogue and flat characters, of plots that make no sense and an idea that makes others want to blow out their brains? If you sum up your work and all you see is a pile of shit, can you be proud of it?

Of course, you can, just look at all of our parents.

This is something that you made. It is a thing that did not exist before but does now. It is an expression of either nobility, either way; it's expression of yourself. Even when I compared myself heavily to bigger authors and stole their voice, my insecurity in word choice was still expressed on the pages that some of you have read.

You work, in other words, is an aspect of you. It can never be you (is it possible to fit your strange love of dortoirs and fetishes in just one tale), but it's a part of you, one that you were maybe unaware of. The fact that you get to see a new side of you, to surprise yourself by inventing things you've never thought of before. Writing can be a release, communication to other souls, or even another world to escape to for just a tad longer.

Most writing beings with good intentions.

This is what saves us the most. Most of the work I made, despite its quality or sanity, began with a good intention. I recently entered my 20s, and the world felt like it was changing, and to be honest with you, that change scared me. I had not the voice nor the words to express what I felt, but I knew, that if I just began writing a story, whatever was happening inside me would find an escape.

My goal was to present change of being a necessary thing. That the end of good times, made secure by our memories, does not entail the end of all good times. Just because we stop leaning on others and embark on our own path does not mean we will be sucked away by some mundane sadness: in fact, it's a time where we can make relationships and memories by our own violation.

I failed horribly in that story. I had a good idea that I wanted to express, but my lack of talent held me back from crafting a story worthy of the concept. But just because the story failed doesn't mean that I didn't learn from it. There are still traces in the prose, evoking what had been planned in the reader, and maybe they can envision what my true goal was.

Your intention will save you most of the time. It is not a defense against criticism, nor a reason to lord over others, simply a reason to be proud of what was written.

I'm sure there are more reasons I can pull outta my ass, but you folks can do that yourself if you need the additional motivation. For now, I can offer just one piece, the last thing that actually bears results.

If you're not proud of your own work, why should anyone else? If you can't sell all that is good about your story, the stuff that makes it worth getting over all that is bad, then why would anyone take the time to read your story? You should bash your fic, criticizing all that is wrong with it and fixing it, but at the end of the day, you still want peeps to read it. If not, then why post it online anyway?

You should sell you fic enough to be read, yet still hate it enough to assess it while sitting next to your critics. This story is an aspect of yourself, this is true, but there are always parts of ourselves that we should fix, that we should improve upon. Flaws give us character, but if we can resolve them, then shouldn't we be doing just that?

Anywho, that's enough rambling for me. Hopefully, there's was something amidst the mess to make it worth your while, and if not, then just send me hate mail and I will proceded to hate upon myself. If you think I'm wrong anywhere, please feel free to tell me so in the comments below. That aside, happy writing and reading to all, and be kind to strangers on the internet.

PS. Flutterpriest and Anonpencil did a phenomenal presentation on the subject at a con. If you can, ask them to give you the gist: it will be well worth your time.

~ B_ 25 ~

Comments

[FamousLastWords]

I'm not necessarily proud of my words. I'm proud of my time. I'm proud I used my time to create words, words people enjoyed, words that helped me get some great friends.

[B_25]

4770640
I didn't even consider this.

Time could be spent jerking off or making work that uses the word connect to its every definition. Thanks for sharing this, bro.

[sejox]

man, I can barely speak your language. most times than what I would admit I have felt the shame of my own words and phrasing.

But I keep going... mostly for two reasons:

1. I know that there are people enjoying those words... even the ones that laugh at my grammar. As a Pinkie Pie like person, there are little things that make me happier than seeing other people happy.

2. I like to improve. mostly if I know that I'm a utter trash at something. knowing that while being on the bottom I can only try to go up and get better is something that keeps me moving forward in life.

BTW: I will dislike this post if I could. reasons? More Spike pics were needed

[Zet Rock]

When the first chapter is post that great pride will set in out of nowhere. It will take over you until a comment you never saw coming; hits you in the face: flames... The first flame I received knock what I was feeling on to the ground and crush it with a massive step. Yet, I learn something important. Hold on to that feeling as long as you can! Because that pride is prove that you are a writer. If you can hang on to that feeling within firestorms and earthquakes, I know that writing the best to my ability and surpassing my own limits are possible.

B_25 that was a great post. In many ways, it is the same with me.

[B_25]

4771317
4770747

Glad it could help!

[anonpencil]

OH GOD I remember that panel. Would love to do another one sometime about how writing bullshit and badly can help you git gud. All of this is so very well put and well said, nicely done. I can even sorta kinda forgive all the Spike pics. ;)

[B_25]

4771718
Your panel inspired this blog. Wish someone recorded a transcript of it because your advice was far more poignant and better constructed than this blog could ever be. You guys helped me learned how to write for fun, and that not all writing has to be good.

Hope you guys do a blog or something of the kind on the subject again. As for writing badly in the attempts to git gud, I always find my way back to Dan Harmon:

"My best advice about writer's block is: the reason you're having a hard time writing is because of a conflict between the GOAL of writing well and the FEAR of writing badly.

By default, our instinct is to conquer the fear, but our feelings are much, much, less within our control than the goals we set, and since it's the conflict BETWEEN the two forces blocking you, if you simply change your goal from "writing well" to "writing badly," you will be a veritable fucking fountain of material, because guess what, man, we don't like to admit it, because we're raised to think lack of confidence is synonymous with paralysis, but, let's just be honest with ourselves and each other: we can only hope to be good writers. We can only ever hope and wish that will ever happen, that's a bird in the bush. The one in the hand is: we suck.

We are terrified we suck, and that terror is oppressive and pervasive because we can VERY WELL see the possibility that we suck. We are well acquainted with it. We know how we suck like the backs of our shitty, untalented hands.

We could write a fucking book on how bad a book would be if we just wrote one instead of sitting at a desk scratching our dumb heads trying to figure out how, by some miracle, the next thing we type is going to be brilliant. It isn't going to be brilliant. You stink. Prove it. It will go faster.

And then, after you write something incredibly shitty in about six hours, it's no problem making it better in passes, because in addition to being absolutely untalented, you are also a mean, petty CRITIC.

You know how you suck and you know how everything sucks and when you see something that sucks, you know exactly how to fix it, because you're an asshole.

So that is my advice about getting unblocked. Switch from team "I will one day write something good" to team "I have no choice but to write a piece of shit" and then take off your "bad writer" hat and replace it with a "petty critic" hat and go to town on that poor hack's draft and that's your second draft.

Fifteen drafts later, or whenever someone paying you starts yelling at you, who knows, maybe the piece of shit will be good enough or maybe everyone in the world will turn out to be so hopelessly stupid that they think bad things are good and in any case, you get to spend so much less time at a keyboard and so much more at a bar where you really belong because medicine because childhood trauma because the Supreme Court didn't make abortion an option until your unwanted ass was in its third trimester. Happy hunting and pecking!"