I feel a little sick.
I don't know how out-loud-readable my work actually is. The Rat says--not very. Sometimes I do things with grammar that would make my English teachers cry. (Yes, they let me teach composition. Scary.) I write a lot of the time for rhythm and flow--how the words sound in my head as I write them, cadence, the number and balance of stresses and beats in a phrase. I also intercut lines with other lines and cross-cut thoughts. There's an element of performance to reading out loud that scares the hell out of me. I am no actor. But then I teach, don't I, and that's a good 75% performance. More than.
Writing is a matter of talent, skill, sure, but it's also about taste. And I write genre. Friend P. assures me that others here write genre, too, and one even writes SF, and P. herself reads and loves spec-fic, so I will fit right in. I hate, by the by, the habit that makes me say that--I write genre--as if I am confessing a sin, as if I should be ashamed. But I am also used to the nose-wrinkling from the MFA types when they hear genre, as if literary fiction isn't a genre of its very own.
But let's be honest. What scares me is that a bunch of people who do not know me will think that I suck. Which I don't, I know that--I am a good writer. Other strangers spared the experience of meeting me face to face have purchased my work and put it in their publications. I know I do not suck, and yet--I am reduced to being 10 again, moving into a new school, and trying to figure out how I am going to fit into a bunch of people who've known each other for years.
Sweet ancestors, this isn't even about the words on the page, this is about being the new kid. Now I just need to decide what to
I am a good writer.
ReplyDeleteAhem.
[Edit]
I am a [damn] good writer.
[/Edit]
There. Much better after a drive by edit.
I think it is every writer's fear that their writing does not clothe them at all, but rather strips them bare.
ReplyDeleteWhich, I suppose, explains the tawdry webcam diva feel of some of the literary fiction we've seen.