When You Love Your Own Writing
But you think maybe you shouldn't
WELCOME WRITERS. To those of you who have signed on for emails, oh my god, thank you! To the others who have just stumbled onto Writer Everlasting, if you like what you read here, please consider subscribing so you won’t miss a thing! This is a home, a safe place for writers, and if anyone should have a voice, it’s writers.
It’s FREE, no sales pitches, no nagging.
I’m looking to build a community here and all I need now is the community. That’s you. And me.
Invite your writer friends and let them know we’re here and we’re ready to rumble. Come on! Let’s talk!
I’ve been writing for many decades now and I’m finally going to say it: I love a lot of what I write. I love it so much I go back and read the good stuff over and over, just because. It’s like rereading a good book. There’s that woozy satisfaction, every single page, even though you know what’s going to happen. It’s like listening to the same good music, over and over. It moves you. It makes you happy. It’s as if it’s there just for you.
That’s the way I feel about my own writing. When it’s good.
I think I’m a pretty good writer. I’ve never said that out loud, let alone put it in print, but if I didn’t think I was a good writer nothing on earth would prompt me to keep on doing it. I keep on because there’s something there that makes it worth it. For me.
You might be wondering what brought this on. I wondered, too, and then I remembered how I was feeling just yesterday, when I received yet another rejection. I didn’t see this one coming. I felt sure I had aced it, that I had written the piece they couldn’t refuse. But they did, and not in a good way. Pretty much the standard “Whoever you are, thanks but no thanks.”
I know when this happens I’m supposed to go back and analyze that piece, run it past my editor-self to see where I went wrong; but what if, after I’ve read it again, I don’t just like it, I love it? What if I’m pretty sure I’ve said what I wanted to say in exactly the way I wanted to say it?
Screw ’em! I’ll just hang onto it. I’ll keep it to myself. I’ll wrap my arms around it and keep it close, because I love it so much. It is no longer for public consumption. It’s mine, all mine, and I’ll love it as it is.
But because I can’t help myself, by next week I’ll be taking a look at it again, and, like lettuce slowly rotting in the vegetable drawer, something will have happened to it. The outer layers will have wilted some. It will have lost its shine.
That story I swore was the best it could ever be will have transformed into that story that wasn’t good enough for the editors.
All it took was time. It had to sit awhile. Because love is blind and passion seduces. We writers are notorious for being seduced by words and it’s not uncommon for us to fall madly in love with our own. We have to. We wouldn’t let them go out into the world if we didn’t think they were pretty damned special.
I didn’t lie when I said I love what I write, but I have to be careful that I don’t love it so much I can’t see where it needs fixing. If I love the idea, I have to work at respecting it enough to give it my all. And if it’s not working I have to make some hard decisions: Is it worth saving or should I just shut it down?
That’s all part of loving your own work: you see it for what it is and you don’t let it go out until it’s presentable. You started it from scratch and molded it into something only you could have written. It’s now a part of you, no matter where it goes from here.
There’s a reason we go back and read our pieces over and over again, in case we’ve missed something that would render them unworthy. There’s a reason every single one of us pauses, finger in the air, just before hitting the ‘Publish’ button. It’s because a part of us is now going to be judged and if it’s found wanting we’ll feel the pain.
All of this angst is a part of the process. It’s the price we have to pay when what we’re doing is a labor of love. And most of us wouldn’t have it any other way.
I fell in love with the first book I wrote, which I (wisely) no longer share with others. Two or three years out from the start, I began to realize that I had somehow reconstructed some trauma scenario from my youth, transposed it into an era prior to mine and a country in Europe where I have never lived. . . and that by doing this, I had processed a good deal of the trauma, WITHOUT actually remembering ANY of it. (I also gave this new story an ending of love, generativity, and resolution, three things I'm sure were not present in the original version from my life.)
For the first year, while writing this, I would lie in bed at night reciting certain passages in my head. Eventually I reached a point where the need to do this passed, and I could no longer recall those passages by heart. It's the strangest process I have ever been part of. I've never shared this before as I don't know anyone who would be even remotely interested.
Even now I am embarrassed at the memory of having shown this story to anyone (something I naively did because I thought it was so wonderful. . . .yikes!!) I'm comforted by the certainty that those people have forgotten it by now (whew!) Would love to know if anyone has been through anything similar in terms of resolution of unconscious material.
Well said. I can very well relate to this.