Writing Garbage
Last
week in Trying Too Hard, I wrote
about the power of showing instead of telling. I talked about preachy stories
and how they can turn people off. I encouraged you as an author to back off a
bit and trust the readers to figure out what you’ve shown them, instead of you
spelling it all out.
And
so now you’re thinking about that. And you’re also thinking about how you want
to write well. And
it’s quite possibly terrifying. Because that’s how I feel.
There’s
this pressure to “get it right” on the first try. There’s also the knowledge
that the chances of that are…not good. We want so badly to write well that we don’t want to see
ourselves write anything bad. And
so, we freeze up.
But
as many authors have wisely said, “It’s better to write something bad than to
not write at all.”
If
we get something down on paper, we can always come back and edit it. At least
we’ll have something to edit.
Fear
is a normal thing for writers, but we can’t let it control us. Otherwise, we
wouldn’t be authors—we couldn’t be if we didn’t write anything.
Last
week during revisions, I replaced a scene that no longer fit in Lionel of Angrasté: Assassin of Love, but I spent hours working on one
page. I felt like what I was trying to write was going to turn out like a scene
stuck in solely for plot. I hesitated to write the new scene because of the
compliments I’d received on the old one, but I knew the old scene didn’t fit
anymore. It took me a while to realize why it was taking me so long. It wasn’t
that the scene was tough. It wasn’t that it had to be thousands of words long.
But trying to get the words out on a single page was taking forever for no
apparent reason.
I
was afraid. I was afraid to write something cliché, something that felt like it
was just for the plot, and something that wouldn’t turn out as good as what I
had before. When I realized that I was scared, it helped. I then knew I had to
quit procrastinating and to just. write. it. Realizing my fear gave me a wall to break
down.
C.J.
Cherryh said, “It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit
brilliantly.”
I
like that quote. It gives us freedom to write bad, but then reminds us that it’s
not okay to stay there. We’ve always got to work toward something better. It
also makes me think that maybe Cherryh said that for self-encouragement, to
overcome personal fear and insecurity in writing.
It’s
okay to be afraid, so long as you keep going. We’re all afraid to write at some
point. It’s okay to write trash. You’ve got to have something to edit
brilliantly. :)
Read
more on fear in writing:
…
“The waste basket is the writer's best
friend.” – Isaac Bashevis Singer
...
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