March 2012
23 posts
Sending my shit writing off to get rejected somewhere. Wish me luck.
February 2012
31 posts
Neil Gaiman: On Writing. (A bit long. Sorry.) →
neil-gaiman.tumblr.com
I got up this morning, and read the thirty or so questions that people had left in the last 8 hours. And apart from the few that wanted to tell me that, honestly, there’s nothing in the whole world like a photo of a gentleman holding a small yellow chainsaw, most of the rest of them were writing…
Neil, you rock.
The harder I work at trying to impress people, the more I think I fail at it. Freud calls that the super-ego, the idea of social perfection. So often, I hold myself back for the sanctity of saving face and all that’s given me in return is recurring social withdrawal and an enormous inferiority complex. When you live with the sole intent of pleasing others, you lose your identity and your sense of self worth. Someone somewhere will always have a problem with you. I’m not writing this as a way of self-encouragement. I hate it when people are all “fuck ‘em and fuck other’s opinions.” You will always care about what other people think about you. Maybe it’s just a few people, but you still care and those opinions affect your judgment. People admire honesty more than agreement. I’m almost 30 years old, and I still feel like I’ve done nothing with my life except spin around in constant circles of disillusionment and deepening cynicism. Optimism must begin at honesty.
So…know what’s tough? Writing a sci-fi novella. What’s also tough? Writing a mystery novella. What’s even tougher? Writing a sci-fi noir mystery novella. And the toughest one of all? Revising a sci-fi noir mystery novella so that it’s believable, character-driven, memorable, taking place 500 years from now in a city I’ve never been to, all in under a week. I guess I dug my own grave on this one, but seriously FML.
I still have so much of my effing thesis to revise and pretty much a week to do it. I haven’t even read some of the words I’ve written for six months. God have mercy on my soul.
