 | 29 Nov 06 |
As writers, published or pre-published, many of us often experience uncertainty, apprehension, and even fear when it comes to our work. The questions that usually seed these emotions are; “What will people think when they read my story? Will they like it? Despise it? Have I done my best? Am I good enough to be published? Stay published?” And heaven forbid if a bad review is thrown into that mix because they amplify and multiply those questions a hundred times over.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m plagued with these insecurities from time to time, and if I’m not careful, they’ll take root and drag me into some dark cave that has no words. In other words, I get so disillusioned I can’t write for shit. Fortunately, this doesn’t occur as often as it did when I first started in the business, but it does still happen.
One weapon I’ve found that effectively beats the insecurity cooties into submission is a small brown book. Most of the words in it are over a hundred years old, but I still find them relevant, insightful, and timeless. See if you agree…
A passage from: Rainer Maria Rilke—LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET
“You ask whether your verses are good. You ask me. You have asked others before. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are disturbed when certain editors reject your efforts. Now (since you have allowed me to advise you) I beg you to give up all that. You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all—ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple, “I must,” then build your life according to this necessity; your life even into its most indifferent and slightest hour must be a sign of this urge and a testimony to it. Then draw near to Nature. Then try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose. —describe your sorrows and desires, passing thoughts and the belief in some sort of beauty—describe all these with loving, quiet, humble sincerity, and use, to express yourself, the things in your environment, the images from your dreams, and the objects of your memory. If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it—for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place. . . And even if you were in some prison the walls of which let none of the sounds of the world come to your senses—would you not then still have your childhood, that precious, kingly possession, that treasure-house of memories? Turn your attention thither. . . and if out of this turning inward, out of this absorption into your own world verses come, then it will not occur to you to ask anyone whether they are good verses…for you will see in them your fond natural possession, a fragment and voice of your life. A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity. In this nature of its origin lies the judgment of it: there is no other.
Therefore, my dear sir, I know no advice for you save this: to go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness . .”
So what weapons do you use against the insecurity cooties?
© 2006 – 2009, Deborah LeBlanc. All rights reserved.
Deborah LeBlanc is an award-winning author and business owner from Lafayette, Louisiana. She's also a licensed death scene investigator and an active member of two national paranormal investigation teams.
She is the president of the Horror Writers Association, president of the Writers' Guild of Acadiana, president of Mystery Writers of America's Southwest Chapter, and an active member of Sisters in Crime, Novelists Inc, and International Thriller Writers Inc. In 2004, she created the LeBlanc Literacy Challenge, an annual national campaign designed to encourage more people to read, and founded Literacy Inc. a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting illiteracy in America’s teens. She also takes her passion for literacy and a powerful ability to motivate to high schools around the country.
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argh! I beat the crap out of them with a huge stick! Okay, I lied. I whine about it, huh, Nat?
by Karin November 29th, 2006 at 8:24 amSeriously, I accept it for what it is, whine about it, feel somewhat better, then move on. Until the next cycle.
Beat the crap out of them, too funny Karin.
Interesting post Deb, I especially appreciate the last paragraph. Thank you.
by Cele November 29th, 2006 at 8:50 ami don’t have a fool proof method. Like Karin, I whine and they I just try to move on. Oddly I was just thinking about it this morning before I read this post. My thought was that I can’t let critics and reviewers get between me and the readers. I’m writing the books for readers that enjoy my stories. I need to keep the other voices out of my head.
BUT I need to balance that with learning and improving my writing. It’s a fine line.
by Jen November 29th, 2006 at 9:11 amWonderful post. Yesterday I was stressing over my Golden Heart entry. So I called my friend Lee, to stress with me. Sometimes you just need another voice to say, it’s okay.
Most of all, you have to believe it is the best you’ve ever written…..so far. I know you get better as you learn and grow. But, I think at each moment you have to find some contentment with your writing. You can think it sucks…..tomorrow. LOL
by Amanda November 29th, 2006 at 9:42 amI have a dear, dear friend who quit writing, sadly, after she sold thirty or forty or fifty erotic novellas. Boy, she was SO good at portraying real, gripping emotions in her characters, better than many NY authors. She had a habit of thinking her stuff sucked after she finished it. Weirdly enough, the more she hated it, the better it was.
I learned, from her, that we aren’t the best judge of our own work. And when we think it sucks, and when we’re mired in the ending of it and we hate it, that it’s probably nowhere near as bad as it seems.
by spyscribbler November 29th, 2006 at 10:57 amThis summer, my eight year old nephew (and up-and-coming tennis star, according to regional press reports) had his second visit to Wimbledon to see his favorite tennis player, Roger Federer, in action. The game lasted less than fifty minutes as a typical English downpour spoiled the entire day, but a more important memory kicked into effect as far as I was concerned.
I had the same ambitions at his age; to play the Centre Court, and win, to great adulation from my fans, but the one thing I have always carried with me, throughout my life (and changes of career!), is the inscription carved into a sign positioned above the players as they pass through the glass doors into the walkway to the Centre Court. It states, quite simply: If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters as the same …
Whenever I revisit this poem, which I learned in its entirety on return from my first visit to Wimbledon, I am reminded of some great advice for dealing with the complexities of life:
Rudyard Kipling’s If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting, too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run –
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!
If you think about the era in which this was written, Rudyard Kipling had a pretty good fix on twenty-first century life (well, apart from the last line!). Or maybe, as I’m beginning to ponder in my writing, we never really learn anything from history / life?
My nephew has his feet firmly on the ground (although inside, I know he’s torn, as I was, between art and sport), but I intend to teach him more about this poem as he becomes old enough to understand. I hope it helps him in the same way it has guided me through life.
by Victoria November 29th, 2006 at 11:41 amYou guys must be psychic. You don’t know how much I needed to hear all this! I’ve been going through a “why do I even bother” phase for the past couple of weeks. I’ve been waiting to hear from an agent who has had my full manuscript for six weeks. I’m trying to be hopeful, but you know how it is when you wait so long, even when the agent tells you it’ll be 6-8 weeks. I keep thinking if she really liked it, I’d have heard by now.
But after reading all your posts, I’ll try to keep my chin up! If it’s rejected, I’ll send out the next batch of queries.
It’s comforting to know that even published authors have doubts at times.
by Joyce Tremel November 29th, 2006 at 12:53 pmAmanda, good luck with the GH! You know I’m totally rooting for you!
Joyce, we all have doubts. I’ve said many times how I couldn’t write for two months after THE PREY hit the list. I was paralyzed. I still worry about things, but fortunately haven’t been frozen again.
I love that poem, Victoria! I remember the first time I read it in high school. It means so much more now.
(Oh, and I whine a lot to Karin. I figure if I listen to her plaintive wail, she has to listen to mine
by Allison November 29th, 2006 at 1:20 pmKarin, you don’t whine. We talk out our “shared angst.” I refuse to accept that as whining. Allison, YOU have doubts? Wow. You just seem so confident.
by Natalie November 29th, 2006 at 2:43 pmI lean on my husband, because he “believes” all the time, even when I don’t.
by Meretta ~ American Title Finalist November 29th, 2006 at 5:31 pmWow, Nat, I didn’t know I was that good an actress.
by Allison November 29th, 2006 at 10:40 pm