back on that unpublished author woes
Okay, so I know that I'm 21, and I'm not exactly mad about not being more en train to being traditionally published. I'm really not--mad isn't like, the right word for it. But it's something that I think pretty much everyone who aims to be traditionally published feels. It's a sort of, not quite panicky but definitely melancholy feeling. It's writing a million things and socking them away on your hard drive, it's being super confused when anyone compliments your writing.
I was one of those 'smart in elementary school' kind of kids. It was not hard to be the smart one in a class of eight, our four, or, I think at our height, around twelve? Thirteen, maybe? My school is, at this point, only doing better than the reservation schools in NoDak. My high school, elementary school, middle school, is in the bottom three per cent.
So like, it's not hard to be the smart one in that environment. All that means is you can write a sentence and do your homework.
And like, I've adjusted my viewpoints. My younger brother's smarter than me. A lot of people are smarter than me, and I'm like, chill with that. It used to be a little demoralizing but now I've accepted it and it's chill. And there comes a point where you start to feel that about writing, too. Like, you're passable, you can like, make it work, and maybe bottom-list pulp isn't as good as your stuff but the only thing really exceptional about your writing is your output, because Jesus Christ Aurora You Write A Lot.
And it's not that I don't have faith that I'll get agented and traditionally published and everything, because I do think that'll happen.I think if you work at anything hard enough you can make it happen. So I think it'll happen, sometime. It won't be as soon as what my secret heart keeps holding on to (but to be a writer you've got to keep that optimistic little goblin alive in the secret chamber of your heart,, right?), but it's going to happen. If I didn't think it was going to happen I'd still write but I doubt I'd bother trying to query and, honestly, I'd probably just be writing first drafts.
No, that's a lie. I do like seeing a project grow into something palatable and not just a rough rambly twenty thousand words of bullshit. So I'd write. And I'd rewrite.
To me, and to a lot of writers, the absolute dream, the, 'this won't happen but wouldn't it be nice' is to be able to live off your writing. To not have to worry about money, to work part-time if you want to but not to have to. To be able to write and only write. Like, that's the dream, right? It ain't gonna happen for 99% of us but it's a dream.
So I dunno. This turned from something weird to something weirder, but hopefully I wrapped it all up in a way that it was at least cohesive. Shit, man, I could've written about the Manson Family, my professor for Music Appreciation played "Helter Skelter" in class today and I nearly had a heart attack.
I was one of those 'smart in elementary school' kind of kids. It was not hard to be the smart one in a class of eight, our four, or, I think at our height, around twelve? Thirteen, maybe? My school is, at this point, only doing better than the reservation schools in NoDak. My high school, elementary school, middle school, is in the bottom three per cent.
So like, it's not hard to be the smart one in that environment. All that means is you can write a sentence and do your homework.
And like, I've adjusted my viewpoints. My younger brother's smarter than me. A lot of people are smarter than me, and I'm like, chill with that. It used to be a little demoralizing but now I've accepted it and it's chill. And there comes a point where you start to feel that about writing, too. Like, you're passable, you can like, make it work, and maybe bottom-list pulp isn't as good as your stuff but the only thing really exceptional about your writing is your output, because Jesus Christ Aurora You Write A Lot.
And it's not that I don't have faith that I'll get agented and traditionally published and everything, because I do think that'll happen.I think if you work at anything hard enough you can make it happen. So I think it'll happen, sometime. It won't be as soon as what my secret heart keeps holding on to (but to be a writer you've got to keep that optimistic little goblin alive in the secret chamber of your heart,, right?), but it's going to happen. If I didn't think it was going to happen I'd still write but I doubt I'd bother trying to query and, honestly, I'd probably just be writing first drafts.
No, that's a lie. I do like seeing a project grow into something palatable and not just a rough rambly twenty thousand words of bullshit. So I'd write. And I'd rewrite.
To me, and to a lot of writers, the absolute dream, the, 'this won't happen but wouldn't it be nice' is to be able to live off your writing. To not have to worry about money, to work part-time if you want to but not to have to. To be able to write and only write. Like, that's the dream, right? It ain't gonna happen for 99% of us but it's a dream.
So I dunno. This turned from something weird to something weirder, but hopefully I wrapped it all up in a way that it was at least cohesive. Shit, man, I could've written about the Manson Family, my professor for Music Appreciation played "Helter Skelter" in class today and I nearly had a heart attack.
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