The greater misfortune—apathy or incompetence?

by Eve, in Books and Writing (8 Comments)

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.