The greater misfortune—apathy or incompetence?

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Which is worse: to love writing stories but be atrocious at it, or to have the skills of a literary Rumpelstiltskin but no drive to do anything with it?

I narrate in my head all day. Sometimes I tell myself the words are what I intend to write later, but I almost never do it, and the words disappear into the graveyard of dead memory along with everything else I’ve forgotten. (Which includes the password of the diary I kept when I was 15 that, though inaccessible, I still can’t bring myself to delete.)

As far as writing goes, I’m uneducated, but I still think I’m alright at it. (I’d be a bubble-head, for sure, if I confidently asserted myself to be a literary Rumpelstiltskin, but in hypothetical questions hyperbole is allowed.) With a trim and polish my stories could even be marketable. But I just… I just…

I just need a coffee, first.

I need…a sleep. Yes, when I’m rested I’ll be ready.

I have a sleep. I have a coffee. (Not always in that order.) I have whatever else it is I think I need before I can get down to business and write with point, purpose, and poetic tautology.

Then I think…meh. I’d just rather not. Maybe there’s a new episode of Perception, or Supernatural. Oh, yes, I also have to copy a bunch of files from my backup drive to my faux-new (refurbished) computer, and it’s really quite enthralling to watch a status bar crawl along at the speed of world peace.

Anyway, on to the other side of the hypothetical question:

I met a girl in a writing forum who really was the most atrocious writer. Sincerely awful. She didn’t just lack polish — she lacked the entire silverware cabinet. But she loved to write, and wanted other people to enjoy her stories. Or at least, she wanted other people to tell her so. She seemed to be after accolades (although to be fair, so am I, whenever I let a story out of my private headspace), but all feedback she’d been getting were urges to stop writing and to abandon hope.

I felt bad for her when I heard her talk about how badly she wanted to be a writer. I felt bad for myself when I found her to be quite unteachable.

She was either obtuse, or wilfully determined to ignore every suggestion of ways to make her stories more readable. I would labour over my feedback, making them as tactful and encouraging as I could—and actually helpful—but this girl would run any feedback through a binary translation filter that reduced them to either, “Wow, you’re amazing!” or “Augh, my eyes!”

At the end of the day though, who is in the better position? She has the lust for writing, so she could make it to the proverbial moon. Eventually. Even if she has to dig her way out of the trenches with a toothpick first. I could be sitting in a spaceship in this metaphor, but I still wouldn’t get to the moon, because piloting a spaceship sounds like hard work and I’d rather watch Perception.

If I were a character in someone’s story, I’d be the one who turns out to be a disgruntled janitor catching flyaway sheets of newspaper skating across the courtyard. I’d pick one up and see a crumpled article about the annoying unteachable girl having written a book that outsold the Bible.

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(8) Comments

  • Rebekah
    26 Aug 2015

    Would you like to be encouraged to write more? Because it seems your mourn your lack of motivation. Or are you not particularly fussed with your apathy and are merely musing on it for the purpose of sharing ponderings?

    • Eve
      26 Aug 2015

      I do mourn the days when writing stories was my recharge-the-battery activity. Now it feels like work; energy expenditure.

  • Rebekah
    26 Aug 2015

    Also, yay for doing some writing… about your lack of will to write… So meta, much layers.

    • Eve
      26 Aug 2015

      That did occur to me, with some amusement. But my reluctance to write is more applicable to fiction. I can write creative non-fiction easily enough, because I already know how it ends! Fiction requires you to make a skeleton and flesh, before you can put fancy clothes on it.

  • Deborah Makarios
    26 Aug 2015

    Try setting a timer for ten minutes and writing first, then watching Supernatural, taking a nap or whatever.
    She who is willing to learn (be it craft or discipline) is always ahead of she who isn’t, aka the Writer of Doom.
    And because it wouldn’t be a comment from me without a book recommendation: Becoming A Writer by Dorothea Brande – she talks about just this problem.

    • Eve
      26 Aug 2015

      Alas, ‘Becoming a Writer’ isn’t available at ePukapuka (or in dead-tree edition at my local library), which realistically means I’m much less likely to read it. In other news though, I finished your previously recommended ‘Bird by Bird’ a couple of days ago. I loved the entertainment factor in its realism! Although, description of her pre-publication nerves made me hyperventilate a little, in sympathy pain.

      • Deborah Makarios
        26 Aug 2015

        Yeah, availability is a pain. I’m thinking about buying a copy from Book Depository (NZD18) – if I do I can always loan it to you by post or family grapevine.
        Or you might be able to find a PDF version online, although possibly it would be of dubious legality…

        • Eve
          27 Aug 2015

          Considering the intrigue and reader response (by way of reviews on Amazon), I found that their less-than-$4 ebook price was good enough even for my Scrooge self! It feels sacrilegious to mark dead tree editions—an ebook version I can note and highlight. 🙂

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