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serynI've been sort of thinking about stuff. Not like intellectually, but shifting the ol' brain box out of idle.
One of my favorite things in life is that "Nailed it!" feeling. I don't write much because I know I can't consistently produce things that hit with that kind of accuracy. The ironic part is that writing like bread baking is something that succeeds more often the more often you do it. Bread baking works better in kitchens that have had a lot of bread baked in them. Some of it is the experience of the baker, but even a complete novice does a lot better in a serious baker's kitchen. A lot of that is that yeast floats ambiently in the air and the kinds of yeasts available in a baker's kitchen are more conducive to baking. I think if you never write, the authorial equivalent of yeast is not as well adapted to the task.
I'm still working on the newsletter stuff for my knitting group. I know what I want it to say. I know the slant I want to drive it at. And I just haven't succeeded in three drafts. It's harder because I'm doing this in isolation and normally when I wrote fanfic I had people I could bounce things off of. They're being called cheerleaders in the current vernacular, but that was a function of a beta back in the dark ages. (I dislike the way alphas and betas got conjoined early on but only the sort of project management has been excerpted into a new role. Continuity is a really different thought process compared to comma wrangling.) I sent the original version out to two people and got "the nod" back but with zero comments. I'm bright enough to understand that either this means the people I asked were unable to do the job or the piece I sent sucked so hard that no one was able to see any way of fixing it. I didn't like it because it didn't sound like something I would say.
Which brings us to the next part of the issue. I'm working on this, which is non-fiction, and it's about my participation... but no one who knows me here can believe I actually do this in real life. No one here can even comprehend that I'm really good at this now after more than a year. (And I am better than I was, I don't normally see improvement in myself, but I've found ways to reach people who aren't succeeding with instruction from the other volunteers.) Weirdly, there's one woman who comes and says she just can't make herself be as positive as I am. The first time she said that, I was so shocked I thought I might faint.
It's extremely intensely difficult for me, and a lot of the expectations are for miraculous breakthroughs. I'm not innately a positive person. I only speak English and I'm in the minority. (I've had some instruction, but I'm vastly out of practice and I wasn't good even in the day. But even if I was still that good, I get people who speak stuff no one teaches in American schools.) And I really taught myself most of this the hard way so I'm often frustrated with people who don't even try. What makes me absolutely sure that this would be worth writing is that deep emotional context. When something you do rips your heart out metaphorically, there's usually enough feeling behind your words for it to be discernible to the reader. I know this would be worth reading once I've, "Nailed it!" And that means I've completely bypassed the self-sabotaging phase where I think I'm being arrogant to presume I have something to say.
One of my favorite things in life is that "Nailed it!" feeling. I don't write much because I know I can't consistently produce things that hit with that kind of accuracy. The ironic part is that writing like bread baking is something that succeeds more often the more often you do it. Bread baking works better in kitchens that have had a lot of bread baked in them. Some of it is the experience of the baker, but even a complete novice does a lot better in a serious baker's kitchen. A lot of that is that yeast floats ambiently in the air and the kinds of yeasts available in a baker's kitchen are more conducive to baking. I think if you never write, the authorial equivalent of yeast is not as well adapted to the task.
I'm still working on the newsletter stuff for my knitting group. I know what I want it to say. I know the slant I want to drive it at. And I just haven't succeeded in three drafts. It's harder because I'm doing this in isolation and normally when I wrote fanfic I had people I could bounce things off of. They're being called cheerleaders in the current vernacular, but that was a function of a beta back in the dark ages. (I dislike the way alphas and betas got conjoined early on but only the sort of project management has been excerpted into a new role. Continuity is a really different thought process compared to comma wrangling.) I sent the original version out to two people and got "the nod" back but with zero comments. I'm bright enough to understand that either this means the people I asked were unable to do the job or the piece I sent sucked so hard that no one was able to see any way of fixing it. I didn't like it because it didn't sound like something I would say.
Which brings us to the next part of the issue. I'm working on this, which is non-fiction, and it's about my participation... but no one who knows me here can believe I actually do this in real life. No one here can even comprehend that I'm really good at this now after more than a year. (And I am better than I was, I don't normally see improvement in myself, but I've found ways to reach people who aren't succeeding with instruction from the other volunteers.) Weirdly, there's one woman who comes and says she just can't make herself be as positive as I am. The first time she said that, I was so shocked I thought I might faint.
It's extremely intensely difficult for me, and a lot of the expectations are for miraculous breakthroughs. I'm not innately a positive person. I only speak English and I'm in the minority. (I've had some instruction, but I'm vastly out of practice and I wasn't good even in the day. But even if I was still that good, I get people who speak stuff no one teaches in American schools.) And I really taught myself most of this the hard way so I'm often frustrated with people who don't even try. What makes me absolutely sure that this would be worth writing is that deep emotional context. When something you do rips your heart out metaphorically, there's usually enough feeling behind your words for it to be discernible to the reader. I know this would be worth reading once I've, "Nailed it!" And that means I've completely bypassed the self-sabotaging phase where I think I'm being arrogant to presume I have something to say.
