Writing Pains

Being relatively talented at writing, that is, being able to form sentences that make sense and sometimes even look different than the surrounding sentences, is a mixed blessing. In school, all the teachers rave about your writing, and you feel pretty cool. Hey, I'm talented! Then you get a rep among the other students for being some prodigy writer. They ask for tips on their essays. You read their essays.

And thus discover why your teacher thinks you're such an amazing author. Most people just suck at writing and  you're a welcome, mediocre reprieve from sentences that have no commas, twelve commas, lower case proper nouns, or three subjects and no objects. I don't even know if that last one is even possible. But you get my point: it's a major downer to realize you're only talented by dismal comparison. But still, you can't shake the feeling that you're the next Dickens or Rowling; I mean, your teacher couldn't have been exaggerating that much, could she?

So you go to college and take a creative writing course and your work, which you had fancied witty and charming, gets to ripped to shreds by people who wrote stories that ended in suicide instead of finding out your secret girlfriend was actually your cousin the whole time. Apparently that was a stupid and "manipulative" ending, but suicide is just peachy. All the other students' stories had deeper meaning and were allegorical. Some were even surreal. Yours are just...stories. In fact, you can't even decipher the meanings of the other students' stories half the time. Am I an idiot??

Then your husband gets it into his head that it's your life dream to be a famous novelist (which it is, but no one's supposed to know that), and he's so supportive it's nauseating. "Of course you can be a bestselling author! You're an amazing writer! Of course you can get published! No plot or even tagline? No problem, I'll make it for you. You don't want me to write your book for you? Sheesh. Well, then just spend more time writing. What do you mean 'Writing what?'- writing your book, silly! Well, you won't have a plot and a book until you to get to work, now will you?" Thanks. Real helpful.

So you start a blog as a release valve for the pressure of wanting to write and having no plot or ideas to write about, and at first it's great, but then no one reads it and you're depressed and want to write even less. Just dandy.

Then your last resort is constantly rereading reviews of stories you posted to fanfiction.net, which is a major ego boost, until you start to read a story because, hey, it has 80 reviews, which must mean it's good right? And then you think the story's horrible so you read all 80 reviews, assuming they're flames, but they're all glowing. Each and every review praises the story for its originality, masterful execution, and stunning characterization. Then your last bastion of hope crumbles when you realize that only a tiny percentage of fanfiction.net readers can tell a third-grader's work from MacBeth, and they're not reading your story because it doesn't have enough reviews.

Bollocks.