for a writer, putting work out is an incredibly intimate and vulnerable act. you worry that no ones going to understand it. you worry that youre out of touch. you worry that youre too flippant or whiny or loud or bookish or unpolished or overwrought. you worry that nobody wants to buy your book, or that the few friends and family who buy it out of pity are just going to leave it in their toilet and never open it. you worry about rejection - from publishers and journals and bookstores and blogs. you reread the rejection emails. you worry about your goodreads score. you worry about your sales. if thats good you worry about your collection going out into the void and receiving a critical response that is a big fat nothing. you worry about being ignored. you worry about being a lightweight. you read your book and you know youre a lightweight. you worry that people buy your book just because the cover is colorful or that the title is cute. every negative review on a random blog or site sticks in your head, no matter how unqualified(as you will later rationalize to yourself) the reader. you will remember the cut of every word. you will hang on every pause when someone else talks about your book, every twitch of their eye, every implied denigration unsaid. you worry about other writers selling better than you being published in more journals than you getting more reviews getting a second book out faster winning more prizes getting more features getting more likes on Facebook and somewhere around there you find yourself googling your name or someone elses for the third time that day and you stop and look at what you have become. the way out of this for me was to read other people. to cultivate a healthy respect for the hard work put in by people every bit as talented as you, and more lucky or less lucky as it were. to share their joys and commiserate with their disappointments because who else other than a fellow writer knows how this feels like? to spread far and wide the news of the good work other people do, to grow the small garden we share. we are all maid agencies in bukit timah plaza, massage parlors in beauty world. to find genuine happiness in discovering someone more talented than yourself, and putting your money and credit where your mouth is. to build roads for the next generation. to joy in seeing them bear fruit, and avoiding the mistakes you made. this is the only way to write a book and remain sane.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 15:29:25 +0000
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