If you can divorce yourself from the need for others to validate you, writing is very rewarding (though usually not financially!). Problem is, people play this desperate game of "please love me" with agents, editors, and publishers who can't return the love. In fact, based on my experiences, I rather think that some of their policies and methods inadvertently feed this sickness.
There are people who spend countless hours building model trains in their basements, losing money on their hobby but being happy at the same time. As a group, modern (all?) writers seem unable to do this. There are a lot of wonderfully rewarding occupations that don't pay good wages, and some that don't really pay at all. You do them for the actual rewards, not the imagined ones. And most of those don't suffer from the writer's mystique trap.
Ever since I got over the validation thing, I've been a much happier person, and my writing has improved. And the kicker is, I inherited depression. Most of my family suffers from it naturally. So it's not like I don't have an excuse to be yet another depressed writer...
I just wish more people would ask themselves what their goal is in writing, because being published is really a bad answer to that question.
"I just wish more people would ask themselves what their goal is in writing, because being published is really a bad answer to that question."
Emphatically, yes.
I wrote long before I ever got within smelling distance of publishing. I would write if I never got published again. I feel extremely fortunate that I've been as - well, to use your word for it, as "validated" as I have been so far in my writing life - but writing isn't something I do to prove anything to anybody. I do it because I can't NOT do it. And the reason I've been so fortunate in being published and paid reasonably well is that I've been able to make a living off of it, of sorts, for nearly eight years now. I fully realise how utterly blindingly lucky I am to be able to say this - but I reiterate, once again, if I had published three short stories for the princely sum of twenty dollars apiece in the same time that I've had five books published, I'd still be doing the writing because I want to, because I need to, because I *have* to, and not because I'm actively chasing that publication chimera.
I write because it's air that I breathe. That's as simple as it gets. Ursula le Guin put it best in one of her interviews - she was asked, "What would you be if you weren't a writer?" and she said, "Dead". Yes. That. Word.
I think he forgot to mention the most important reason for being a writer: Writers create the world around them, word by word, and dream by dream. Nothing exists that wasn't first dreamed by someone or something. Storytelling is as old as mankind, and its purpose is to preserve as well as create our reality.
I'll write as long as I have stories inside me and people who want to live through me, whether I have readers beyond myself or not. The magic is too strong to resist!
Here via jpsorrow. Thanks for the link--it was an interesting read. I always wonder about the connection between artistic work of all kinds and self-destructive or depressive tendencies.
For me, writing has really been a life-saver--while the rejections are not so much fun, the act of putting my words on paper, and occasionally sharing those words with others, is one of the great joys of my life.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-24 02:48 am (UTC)There are people who spend countless hours building model trains in their basements, losing money on their hobby but being happy at the same time. As a group, modern (all?) writers seem unable to do this. There are a lot of wonderfully rewarding occupations that don't pay good wages, and some that don't really pay at all. You do them for the actual rewards, not the imagined ones. And most of those don't suffer from the writer's mystique trap.
Ever since I got over the validation thing, I've been a much happier person, and my writing has improved. And the kicker is, I inherited depression. Most of my family suffers from it naturally. So it's not like I don't have an excuse to be yet another depressed writer...
I just wish more people would ask themselves what their goal is in writing, because being published is really a bad answer to that question.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-24 04:09 am (UTC)Emphatically, yes.
I wrote long before I ever got within smelling distance of publishing. I would write if I never got published again. I feel extremely fortunate that I've been as - well, to use your word for it, as "validated" as I have been so far in my writing life - but writing isn't something I do to prove anything to anybody. I do it because I can't NOT do it. And the reason I've been so fortunate in being published and paid reasonably well is that I've been able to make a living off of it, of sorts, for nearly eight years now. I fully realise how utterly blindingly lucky I am to be able to say this - but I reiterate, once again, if I had published three short stories for the princely sum of twenty dollars apiece in the same time that I've had five books published, I'd still be doing the writing because I want to, because I need to, because I *have* to, and not because I'm actively chasing that publication chimera.
I write because it's air that I breathe. That's as simple as it gets. Ursula le Guin put it best in one of her interviews - she was asked, "What would you be if you weren't a writer?" and she said, "Dead". Yes. That. Word.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-24 02:49 am (UTC)I'll write as long as I have stories inside me and people who want to live through me, whether I have readers beyond myself or not. The magic is too strong to resist!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-24 04:11 am (UTC)Amen. Yes. That.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-24 03:11 pm (UTC)Oh, and I just put Dvorak's New World into the CD player to refresh my memory...I also love it.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-30 12:50 am (UTC)For me, writing has really been a life-saver--while the rejections are not so much fun, the act of putting my words on paper, and occasionally sharing those words with others, is one of the great joys of my life.
But then, I'm not too bright. *g*