Author Topic: Writers: Do you Struggle with Balancing Self-Doubt, Shame, and Pride? Read This!  (Read 5072 times)

DKT

  • Friendly Neighborhood
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 4980
  • PodCastle is my Co-Pilot
    • Psalms & Hymns & Spiritual Noir
Christie Yant (aka inkhaven) at Lightspeed has a fascinating interview with Paolo Bagicalupi, Hugo Award winning author of The Windup Girl.

Linking to it here not because he's a critically acclaimed award-winning author, but because his reaction to his own work really surprised me, in the "Oh, wow. Someone of his caliber struggles with that too!"

Quote
With Windup Girl, I felt ashamed all the time. I felt ashamed while I was writing it, I felt ashamed that I had written it, I felt ashamed that I was inflicting it on other people, and now I feel ashamed when people criticize it.

It’s interesting because I feel like that’s the book where I took lots of risks. I mean, I pretty much took every risk I possibly could in The Windup Girl. So when you’re taking lots of risks, you know, your failure opportunities are big. You’ve huge failure opportunities. I suppose that’s the thing that made it good in other people’s eyes was that it was risky—I mean, it was as big and as ambitious as I could make it, whether it was setting it in a foreign country where I needed to do so much research, whether it was having so many characters on the page or whether it was just being so unapologetic about the violence in it or what. It was all risky. And so you feel exposed. I think with Ship Breaker there’s actually very little that’s truly risky about it—the only layer that’s really risky is some of the violence and nobody cares about violence against meth-addicted men, so it’s pretty safe territory really.

I’ve never really had a lot of confidence in the things that I’ve worked on.


nevermore_66

  • Palmer
  • **
  • Posts: 39
    • My Blog
That's very interesting to read. I think the most precarious strand of suspension of disbelief a writer has to conquer is his/her own. You have to subscribe to this really fanciful belief that you have something worth hearing or reading. I think that might be why I like writing at night -- my suspension of disbelief is strongest then.

"There is no exquisite beauty…without some strangeness in the proportion."
~Edgar Allan Poe, "Ligeia"


DKT

  • Friendly Neighborhood
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 4980
  • PodCastle is my Co-Pilot
    • Psalms & Hymns & Spiritual Noir
I think that might be why I like writing at night -- my suspension of disbelief is strongest then.

Ha! Man, I heart that so much  ;D


nevermore_66

  • Palmer
  • **
  • Posts: 39
    • My Blog
 ;D

So much easier to convince myself that I'm a demigod of words and scrivnomancy during the wee hours. That's not to say I don't write when the sun is up (I have to for my day job) -- I'm just more likely to feel small and talentless then. But sometimes you have to slug through word by word, even if you're not feeling it. That's when it's very comforting to know that other writers, even the famous ones, suffer the same doubts,

"There is no exquisite beauty…without some strangeness in the proportion."
~Edgar Allan Poe, "Ligeia"


kibitzer

  • Purveyor of Unsolicited Opinions
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 2228
  • Kibitzer: A meddler who offers unwanted advice

nevermore_66

  • Palmer
  • **
  • Posts: 39
    • My Blog
It is not. I suggest we use it until it is (the very act of which is, in itself, scrivnomancy). I don't know about the rest of you, but the next time I bother to print business cards, I intend them to read: SCRIVNOMANCER.

"There is no exquisite beauty…without some strangeness in the proportion."
~Edgar Allan Poe, "Ligeia"


DKT

  • Friendly Neighborhood
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 4980
  • PodCastle is my Co-Pilot
    • Psalms & Hymns & Spiritual Noir
There needs to be a SCRIVNOMANCER club. And when there is, I want in.


kibitzer

  • Purveyor of Unsolicited Opinions
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 2228
  • Kibitzer: A meddler who offers unwanted advice

Faraway Ray

  • Lochage
  • *****
  • Posts: 340
  • "I loved it!" "So? You also loved World War II!"
That's very interesting to read. I think the most precarious strand of suspension of disbelief a writer has to conquer is his/her own. You have to subscribe to this really fanciful belief that you have something worth hearing or reading.

I think in order to be a writer you have to be a little arrogant. Some part of you has to think that something you made is actually worth the time of dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people to read, remember and discuss. That's some serious balls right there. It's actually kind of galling that we could be so self-centered to think that anyone needs to hear what we have to say.

Anyway, back to working on my novel!  :D


A story of lust, violence and jelly.

Well, Here I Am. My little slice of the blaggin' world.


Dem

  • Lochage
  • *****
  • Posts: 567
  • aka conboyhillfiction.wordpress.com
    • Suzanne Conboy-Hill
There needs to be a SCRIVNOMANCER club. And when there is, I want in.
Think you could do with an apostrophe in there, as in SCRIV'NOMANCER. When you get it acknowledged, can I borrow it to pair with my claim to be an IMAGINATOR? I'm thinking maybe some fancy cloaky and pointy hat stuff comes with a job title like that.

Science is what you do when the funding panel thinks you know what you're doing. Fiction is the same only without the funding.


nevermore_66

  • Palmer
  • **
  • Posts: 39
    • My Blog
I think we can work pointy hats into this.

"There is no exquisite beauty…without some strangeness in the proportion."
~Edgar Allan Poe, "Ligeia"


Dem

  • Lochage
  • *****
  • Posts: 567
  • aka conboyhillfiction.wordpress.com
    • Suzanne Conboy-Hill
I think we can work pointy hats into this.
Yay!

Science is what you do when the funding panel thinks you know what you're doing. Fiction is the same only without the funding.