Trust me, I say this as someone who has been writing for more than twenty years, and has written a lot of crap.
Exactly. Hearken, writers! It was an article of faith at my publishing house that every author must produce a trunkful of bad writing before beginning to produce good stuff. Sometimes we'd get a submission from a new hopeful, and reject it politely -- but the internal comment was "This one hasn't filled up his trunk yet."
So stop worrying about if you are a writer and who will let you be a writer and just sit down and write. And eventually you will write something that sticks with other people.
Precisely. Keep writing. Keep showing your stuff to family and friends until the comments change from "yeah, that's pretty good" to "this is really good!" Keep submitting stuff to publishers, because it'll help you to develop a nice thick carapace of indifference to rejection letters. The only one who can make you quit is you.
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branchandroot
The Trunk
Date: 2006-02-11 12:41 am (UTC)Exactly. Hearken, writers! It was an article of faith at my publishing house that every author must produce a trunkful of bad writing before beginning to produce good stuff. Sometimes we'd get a submission from a new hopeful, and reject it politely -- but the internal comment was "This one hasn't filled up his trunk yet."
So stop worrying about if you are a writer and who will let you be a writer and just sit down and write. And eventually you will write something that sticks with other people.
Precisely. Keep writing. Keep showing your stuff to family and friends until the comments change from "yeah, that's pretty good" to "this is really good!" Keep submitting stuff to publishers, because it'll help you to develop a nice thick carapace of indifference to rejection letters. The only one who can make you quit is you.