Day 173.2: Writing Scares Me
Nov. 6th, 2024 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sunshowerdandelionWriting scares me, definitely. I was going to write 'writing scares me, I think,' but this isn't true. There is no 'I think' to it: Writing scares me. It asks so much and I don't think I have what it wants - I don't have vast reserves of patience to plan scenes, I don't have a strong mind's eye, I don't have enough time (since I have a day job) and when I do more often than not I'd rather be cringing away from writing. It's like I have to fall into writing, by accident, by way of reading a lot. Sometimes when I read a match is struck, and writing scares me less for a time.
Hilary Mantel put it best when she wrote that
but the thing that makes a phrase that fizzes on the paper—you always fear that may not be there any longer, because, after all, you did nothing to deserve it. You did nothing to contrive it. It’s just there. You don’t understand it, it’s out of your control, and it could desert you.
This is exactly my fear every time I type out my stories. Not that my words fizz, but that I do not know if they ever will, if what I'm putting down is true enough. I feel a massive responsibility to my characters, and I know they are leaning on me to get their stories told, but I'm probably not the person for it. I think all writers, no matter how facile their output (I write smut fanfiction about rabbitgirls) have the same sort of fear.
For me it really is a pain. It's not exquisite, or sublime, or like muscle-pain where you know you have to exercise or rest. It is an anxiety and a feeling that my words are dull, that I can never express things right and that I am a lesser human because of it.
I know this is no excuse. My characters trust me, and I have to write to live. My relationships have foundered because of writing (it seems like a cliche but it's very true for me), so it's not that I have much else. I could have gone into music, maybe, or dancing. But I'm stranded here. I have to write.
Hilary Mantel put it best when she wrote that
but the thing that makes a phrase that fizzes on the paper—you always fear that may not be there any longer, because, after all, you did nothing to deserve it. You did nothing to contrive it. It’s just there. You don’t understand it, it’s out of your control, and it could desert you.
This is exactly my fear every time I type out my stories. Not that my words fizz, but that I do not know if they ever will, if what I'm putting down is true enough. I feel a massive responsibility to my characters, and I know they are leaning on me to get their stories told, but I'm probably not the person for it. I think all writers, no matter how facile their output (I write smut fanfiction about rabbitgirls) have the same sort of fear.
For me it really is a pain. It's not exquisite, or sublime, or like muscle-pain where you know you have to exercise or rest. It is an anxiety and a feeling that my words are dull, that I can never express things right and that I am a lesser human because of it.
I know this is no excuse. My characters trust me, and I have to write to live. My relationships have foundered because of writing (it seems like a cliche but it's very true for me), so it's not that I have much else. I could have gone into music, maybe, or dancing. But I'm stranded here. I have to write.
