The unbearable insecurity of writers
Lots of those we call great authors – okay, almost all the authors I know or have read about – suffer from an insecurity, a question they ask themselves all the time: Is my work any good? Have they done themselves and their characters justice, this time? Such is the unbearable insecurity of writers that even famous and very successful authors suffer from angst and mental health problems.
And to the general public who read books, or who simply watch the show from the side-lines, the answer is – of someone like Stephen King or Marian Keyes or Lee Child – “Of course they are good enough. They sell millions of books. What more do they expect? Perfection?”
Writerly insecurity looks a bit like – and is often mistaken for – an ego needing a good massage, but, I believe the reason for the endless quest for reassurance is more subtle.
When we first set pen to paper – okay, when we sit in front of our PCs with a new file open – we have the whole field of possibility open to us, rather like a child’s first day at primary school. We can write literally anything; excuse the pun. But as a story takes shape and the characters show us where to go, as words and plots are tied down, increasingly there arises the question, is this where I am meant to take this story? What if there is a much better line to follow out there, that I have missed? What if all I have written is but a poor reflection of what I should be writing?
And to that, I can offer only the age-old adages that, “What’s for you won’t go by you..” or “If it’s meant to happen, it will,” or “All things work out for the best…” which may be scant comfort, a bit too much like the superstitions that our forebears relied on, but what else can we do? There is no way to know definitively whether what we have is the best finished article we can make; and, we can always console ourselves that a finished book – or even a half-finished book – is probably better than no book at all.
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March 6, 2018
Stuck in the house
Fran Macilvey Fran Macilvey, Happiness Matters 0 Comments
Stuck in the house
The last few days have been strangely peculiar – myself, husband and daughter all stuck in the house because of the weather, kept away from our usual pursuits – in which eventuality I have come off best, since I work from home and have become – alarmingly? – domesticated in the last few years. We have been cheek by jowl, prowling, almost, at the constraints imposed on us by gales, ice and endless snow. When the snow finally stopped, on Thursday evening after forty-eight hours, the silence was almost eerie.
And yet, it is the kind of scenario I am quite comfortable with. We, after all, have enough food, warmth and each other’s company, so what’s not to love? Perhaps the feeling of being trapped, again, is a bit edgy; or perhaps, I can be reassured, since we are all, in the same sense, trapped by the weather.
My health begins to suffer from being so sedentary, my kidneys complaining loudly, and my head needing somewhere to take surplus energy. There have been arguments. But also, rare opportunities to be together and to talk in more depth and come to renewed understandings about all kinds of things. It is important, I know, to keep talking and listening, to keep taking change on board and being accepting.
I hope you have all been all right, while the wind and snow have been blowing and drifting, keeping the cars off the road and ourselves away from our usual routines.
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