I've had a chance to do a retrospective recently.
In 2018, I made a concerted effort to get off of Facebook as a platform. Instead, I shifted to Reddit. One could claim that this isn't an improvement, and obviously there's an argument to be made, but I like that it harkens back to the older days of the internet, when all you had was a screen name and a body of work with which to make your point or build your reputation. It was more of a meritocracy that way, the same way this site is. And, honestly, I've never had problems with a meritocracy; I'm good at figuring out what makes you stand out, both in a good way and a bad way. I digress.
I spend most of my time at the r/relationship_advice subreddit, handing out what knowledge or wisdom I have. (That's the other reason Reddit appeals to me more than Facebook: I'm a natural showoff -- always have been -- and anonymity lets me express that more.) Recently, someone showed up with a question: "My girlfriend wants me to get a job, whereas I want to focus on getting back to my literary pursuits." There are a lot of people who know about relationships, and there are a lot of people who know about writing, but not quite as many who can speak with confidence on both. I dashed off a quick comment reminding him that, if he really loves writing, he'll love it even when he comes home after his 8-hour shift (and that, if he doesn't love it that much, maybe this novel isn't very important to him), and that was that.
Until I got curious and started looking at his actual body of work. Currently he's self-serializing his work, about 2,000 words per chapter, and while he's convinced he knows what he's doing, I'm not sure I agree.
Part of it is just egotism: the post immediately prior to the question of how to get his girlfriend to support him was a screed about how he's a literary genius being failed by the system: how come he, with his high-and-mighty Master of Fine Arts degree, is getting no applause when uneducated losers have thousands of followers? The ones afterward were him bringing his get-my-girlfriend-to-support-me question to the r/AmIWrong and r/AmITheAsshole communities, where he was roundly dismissed as, yes, being the asshole -- especially after someone did an even deeper dive into his posting history and noted that he and the girlfriend have a child together, whom he never mentions in any of his questions about what he thinks his girlfriend owes him. Einstein never said, "Insanity is trying the same thing twice and expecting completely different results the second time" -- it was actually a mystery novelist -- and calling it "insanity" is a little unfair; it's insecurity that drives such behavior. But, given the behavior of this Redditor guy, I think we can safely infer the existence of the insecurity. We can even make guesses as to what it is.
But the other part is that his writing just isn't very good. He's writing it like a gritty hard-boiled murder mystery, but the title and plot seem to suggest it's a romance. Now, obviously, one could combine the two -- I myself arguably did in A Love for the Ages -- but this is hampered by the narrative tone, which is, simply put, also egotistical: the narrator clearly believes himself superior to everyone around him. The narrative itself also doesn't disagree, refusing to puncture the bubble of his ego by highlighting his flaws or even admit that he has any. Unreliable narrators aren't the easiest thing in the world to write, but I've done it, so a literary genius ought to be able to do the same. From a technical standpoint, the story is very good -- this writer does, factually speaking, have command of the English language; I'm sorry to be unkind, but, in terms of actually constructing sentences and following the rules of formal English, he's better than 90% of the people here. But somewhere along the way this guy got the idea that having command of the rules of formal English somehow makes him a genius. He got a lot of feedback, basically universal, that his story isn't very good, but I was the first to write a substantive reply with actual literary analysis of his work. I sincerely doubt he'll take it seriously -- cf the insecurity -- but if he ever gets over himself, he'll have a place to start.
But the reason I'm bringing that here is not because I want to pat myself on the back. (I mean, I do -- I'm still a showoff -- but that's not the only reason.) I'm bringing it here because it got me thinking about my own journey as a writer.
For me, like for this Reddit guy, it started with ego: I was 7 years old and my grade school teacher told me that I was pretty good at writing, and because I have a perfectionist mother, that was the first time anyone had ever told me I was good at anything, so I kept doing it. But, since my mother is a perfectionist, I became one myself; I started pushing myself to not just write beyond my grade level but with actual skill and ability. Additionally, I've identified myself as an otrovert -- a recently invented term for people who feel like outsiders no matter where they are and no matter what community they are surrounded with. Perhaps this is why I have always kept to the fringes of organized art. In terms of writing, I started off hanging out with the fanfic types. In terms of my other major creative life, music, I gravitated to contemporary a cappella, which has a hard time achieving much legitimacy because, at least in the years before Pentatonix, it revolves around covers -- musical fanfic, in other words. In both places, there are structural barriers to achieving financial recognition for your work. In writing I've since moved on to this world, erotica, but that also has structural barriers in terms of pornography's dismal reputation as art. In other words, I have spent my entire creative life in places that are considered illegitimate in various ways.
And, honestly, I think I had the better creative upbringing than he did.
First off, the margins are where the real creativity lives. The mere act of creation is already a copyright violation, so I'm already breaking rules; I might as well break some more while I'm at it. People start doing whatever they feel like, creatively speaking. Now, sure, most of what they write turns out to be crap -- Sturgeon's Law will never be false -- but when you're starting out, your objective isn't to produce salable fiction, your objective is to learn to produce salable fiction, and you learn more from mistakes than successes. Having freedom to make them is crucial.
Second off, the margins are where real creativity lives, because -- to quote Mark Rosewater -- restriction breeds creativity. The more rules you have to follow, not because they're imposed by your teacher (whom you don't respect) but by the intellectual property itself (which you do), the more you have to flex your creative muscles to get the story where you want it to be.
Fanfic is also helpful because it takes away the burden of that most terrifying thing to any creative: the blank page. A blank page is terrifying because the empty spaces are interlocked: "I can't decide on my theme until I understand my characters, but I can't decide on my characters until I understand the setting, but I can't decide on the setting until I understand my plot, but I can't decide on my plot until I understand my theme." "Do I dare / Disturb the universe?" T. S. Eliot asks: "In a minute there is time / For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse." Such it is when contemplating the blank page: it's nothing but ripple effects for days on end. But if you're working in an established IP with its own rules and conventions; part of the blank page is already filled in for you. This lets you study those ripples in isolation, learning how everything interlocks, and gradually learn how to set them in stone yourself when it's just you and an actually blank page.
And finally... Well, some of this might just be the otroversion talking. But all of this, at least for me, combined to make a sense of humility. I can -- I'm not trying to brag here, this is a statement of fact -- I can write. I can produce stories with interesting characters, resonant themes, reasonable plots and reasonable settings. (Those latter two are rarely inspired, but then I don't really go for big dramatic swings anyhow.) I've written comedy, drama and tragedy; I've written romance, mystery, science-fiction and fantasy; I've written short stories and longer novels. I have a fairly thorough command of the medium... And, because I largely developed that command in these "illegitimate" places, I don't believe that entitles me to anything at all. I believe I still need to prove myself to the world at large. I assume I'm a bad writer until proven otherwise. (I assume I can prove otherwise, but not necessarily that I have.) And that's why, when I look over at ZBookStore and see that I have sold a whopping $98 USD in ebooks... I'm over the moon! It implies that maybe I am a good writer. It implies that maybe I'm not wrong about my self-assessment. It implies that hundreds of hours of effort may have been successful.
Because I don't charge in and assume that I'm a good writer. And, perhaps more importantly, I have enough self-esteem to accept that some people disagree.
That's the thing about the Reddit guy. He isn't insisting his work is good because he has a big image of himself. He's doing that because he has a small one. He's one voice yelling against a crowd, trying to insist that up is down and the sky is orange, because he doesn't have enough self-esteem to accept he might be wrong. And, maybe I'm talking out of my ass here -- it's not like I'll ever have the chance to go back and try it the other way -- but I think it's easier to avoid that pitfall if you start by internalizing the idea that you are bad, at least until proven otherwise, and that your goal is to prove otherwise. I don't know whether Reddit Guy's attitude is healthier than mine -- there's an obvious bias at play -- but all I'm saying is that it's possible to have a different attitude than his.
And all I'm saying is, between him and me, only one of us is happy with his life's work.