subjective judgement
Sep. 4th, 2012 06:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eI just listened to a story read out by its writer. I'm sure he was proud of his work. He'd spent so much time and effort on it, first writing and then reading it aloud as a two and a half hour long recording. All that work and the story is sadly, embarrassingly littered with clichéd phrases and story-devices.
This is deeply worrying to me. The problems in this guy's story were clearly quite invisible to him. Do my stories have such glaring faults? Am I simply unable to see them? Scary.
I know my writing has faults. I'm trying very hard to learn through practice, but even if my stories are terrible (oh god I hope they aren't) it won't stop me continuing to try. I figure that I'm an average human with a brain of average intelligence, so I should be able to develop a skill with training. Subjectively, it is difficult to be sure, but I think my writing may be improving. I have a target: if, after about 10 books, my writing is still less than satisfying I'll consider giving up.
I can't help wondering if I'm doing the right thing, though. Maybe I'm wasting my time. Maybe I should be concentrating on drawing, or 3D modelling, or programming. Unfortunately there is no way to tell... and would I be wasting my time there too...?
I worry that I've wasted so damn much of the one and only life I'll ever have.
This is deeply worrying to me. The problems in this guy's story were clearly quite invisible to him. Do my stories have such glaring faults? Am I simply unable to see them? Scary.
I know my writing has faults. I'm trying very hard to learn through practice, but even if my stories are terrible (oh god I hope they aren't) it won't stop me continuing to try. I figure that I'm an average human with a brain of average intelligence, so I should be able to develop a skill with training. Subjectively, it is difficult to be sure, but I think my writing may be improving. I have a target: if, after about 10 books, my writing is still less than satisfying I'll consider giving up.
I can't help wondering if I'm doing the right thing, though. Maybe I'm wasting my time. Maybe I should be concentrating on drawing, or 3D modelling, or programming. Unfortunately there is no way to tell... and would I be wasting my time there too...?
I worry that I've wasted so damn much of the one and only life I'll ever have.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-04 12:14 pm (UTC)Yes.
But showing them to people is the only way to learn.
I know my faults (I stopped writing), but I have every faith in you.
But time writing is never wasted.
no subject
Date: 2012-09-04 11:37 pm (UTC)This is what I hope, and why I open myself on my website, displaying all my stories and pictures for anyone to see, along with posting on my blog each time I update. However you'll notice that I didn't mention the name of the story that I was so critical of. My own reluctance to do so makes me worry that I might not hear of great faults in my work. I do post some of my stuff to a writers' group on the net and they do give me what I hope is good advice, but I've noticed they can be too polite (or in the case of one individual, too crushingly rude).
I am happy to mention works that I praise, for instance I just finished listening to the superb New Zealand radio serial from the late 1990s, Claybourne. Wonderful voice acting, intriguing story peppered with great humor, refreshing and realistic use of dialogue. You can download the whole thing from the Internet Archive at:
http://archive.org/download/OTRR_Certified_Complete_Claybourne/OTRR_Certified_Claybourne_Ver1_CD_1of1.zip
When unzipped you will have all 96 episodes as short (5 minute!) mp3 files.
(I should really make a separate post about this fantastic serial.)
Thank you for the faith in me. I really hope it isn't misplaced.