Letting A Dream Go
Feb. 18th, 2015 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lupestripeFrom a very young age, I have wanted to be a published author. I wrote two novels as a teenager and countless poems honing the craft. I wouldn't say I was particularly good, but I do think I wasn't particularly bad either, having moderate success by getting some poems published in anthologies. I had a passion and a desire to write but this was coupled with having an awful lot of free time living in a village where there was bugger all to do. Consequently I had the opportunity to create and create i did. Then adult life got in the way and things started to go awry.
I guess I'm lucky that I have a job as a journalist, the nearest thing to being an author without being an author itself. Combining this with numerous languages, another interest of mine, makes that a privilege but the drawback is that my creative writing has suffered as a result. Around five years ago, I thought the furry fandom would be a great conduit for my desire to write short stories and indeed I wrote a few, using con book deadlines as a motivation to get stuff done. Being unemployed for three months in 2010 enabled me to focus some more on my creativity and I wrote some good stuff that year, eventually getting published in eight conbooks around that time.
The problem was that no bugger was reading these stories, largely because they weren't adult in nature. Putting countless hours into a story to get no feedback whatsoever was soul destroying and added to this the increased demand from my work, demand that has failed to abate since, I started getting out of the habit. In 2013, with encouragement from Wolfie, I did start writing NSFW pieces just to get read, even though this wasn't my main topic of interest. I set up a new SoFurry account and had moderate success, with some positive if not particularly constructive feedback. However, the house move at the end of that year meant again I couldn't find the time to write and it's largely been the same ever since, with work priorities, socialising and gym taking up the majority of my time, not to mention my learning of Japanese.
The fact is that creative writing is too much like work to me to be bothered any more. The inspiration I once had has died, I no longer get good ideas and my constant state of weariness means I'm too tired to bother when I do have time. Added to this is my increasingly negative view of the fandom and how little common interest I have with the majority and I wonder what's the point? I don't really want to write adult work and I'm not really into the sci-fi or technology scene, preferring more niche interests such as politics or history. Consequently, although I accept my writing desire comes in ebbs and flows, today I have extinguished my dreams of becoming a published author. At the moment it's just not practical and I fear I've lost a great deal of the skill and passion required to make this possible. It's a shame but I have other targets and things I want to do with my life and I should focus on them. It's time to let this dream go.
I guess I'm lucky that I have a job as a journalist, the nearest thing to being an author without being an author itself. Combining this with numerous languages, another interest of mine, makes that a privilege but the drawback is that my creative writing has suffered as a result. Around five years ago, I thought the furry fandom would be a great conduit for my desire to write short stories and indeed I wrote a few, using con book deadlines as a motivation to get stuff done. Being unemployed for three months in 2010 enabled me to focus some more on my creativity and I wrote some good stuff that year, eventually getting published in eight conbooks around that time.
The problem was that no bugger was reading these stories, largely because they weren't adult in nature. Putting countless hours into a story to get no feedback whatsoever was soul destroying and added to this the increased demand from my work, demand that has failed to abate since, I started getting out of the habit. In 2013, with encouragement from Wolfie, I did start writing NSFW pieces just to get read, even though this wasn't my main topic of interest. I set up a new SoFurry account and had moderate success, with some positive if not particularly constructive feedback. However, the house move at the end of that year meant again I couldn't find the time to write and it's largely been the same ever since, with work priorities, socialising and gym taking up the majority of my time, not to mention my learning of Japanese.
The fact is that creative writing is too much like work to me to be bothered any more. The inspiration I once had has died, I no longer get good ideas and my constant state of weariness means I'm too tired to bother when I do have time. Added to this is my increasingly negative view of the fandom and how little common interest I have with the majority and I wonder what's the point? I don't really want to write adult work and I'm not really into the sci-fi or technology scene, preferring more niche interests such as politics or history. Consequently, although I accept my writing desire comes in ebbs and flows, today I have extinguished my dreams of becoming a published author. At the moment it's just not practical and I fear I've lost a great deal of the skill and passion required to make this possible. It's a shame but I have other targets and things I want to do with my life and I should focus on them. It's time to let this dream go.
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no subject
Date: 2015-02-19 11:11 am (UTC)The concept is fine, show that yes if you sit down to do a bit of writing (often only an hour or two a day depending on your typing speed) anyone can bash out the word count for at minimum a short novel 50,000 words (something on the length of "Of Mice and Men" or "The hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy") or indeed often more. However after doing it twice (and succeeding on the second try, by making the word count by day 15) reality kicked in. First yes you "wrote" all those words, but did you have a coherent set of characters? probably not, did you have a story that made any sense? Very unlikely! Oh and that's not counting all the spelling and grammar mistakes that you made along the way, since you concentrated over the word count rather than the accuracy.
Then it dawns on you that while it's possible to knock out a novel length story in less than a month, getting it edited even rewritten takes by far longer is a soul destroying process.
And even when it's been banged into some kind of shape there is STILL no guarantee that anyone will even look at the thing, much the less read it, much even LESS publish it.
Yes there have been something like 20 books created by NaNoWriMo but when you consider that tens of thousands of drafts are made EACH YEAR that's a very poor success to failure rate.
Actually even the name was a lie "Novel Writing" you didn't really "write" a novel, you wrote a first draft, that would have to be edited like crazy to be called a novel. It was just the first, actually very easy, step on what is a very long hard, and kind of depressing road to getting your story out there. Support at the end of the month was and is near nil as well.
I don't know that experience enough kicked the shit out of me. It was a shame too since I used to go to writers club who used to comment that I had great ideas for stories and should have been published at some point or another. That and I still have story and ideas for worlds characters and universes but no real outlet for them.
Shame :(
no subject
Date: 2015-02-19 12:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-02-27 06:03 am (UTC)Stories do, after all, follow no particular sense in what does and doesn't appeal. I can look for TF works, and even of those that aren't all about extremism (oddly commonplace!), where the nature of the TF is something I might quite reasonably be expected to be tickled by, it's only a far smaller percentage I'll ever wind up saving - usually a few stories or images a year. Some things are a complete deal-killer for me, whereas they'll be irresistible to some others. So it goes. ^_^;
I'd like you to reconsider. I'm sure you have inspiration - that seems pretty much irrepressible within someone as yourself. It doesn't matter if a great idea only comes around once in a long while - who needs fifteen pots on the boil at the same time? Just.. don't refuse your muse, mm?
*hug*