Being a writer is a tumultuous business. Not in a professional sense. Professionally, if you write, you create words for specific people based on specific topics and subjects. It’s a skill you can master and you can speak with many voices when commanded. That’s okay, usually you’re getting paid for it and artistic integrity can sit in the corner nursing a bourbon for all you care.
When you write for pleasure, and I use that expression very loosely, you’re not creating words for anything or anybody specific, you’re creating stories, and moods, and tensions, and a sense of living that you’re tasked with making real for the reader. It’s up to you to make the reader connection, to know a bit about who you might be writing for, and it’s your responsibility to not disappoint them. On screen, the words look fine (most of the time) and the paper dialogue reads well out loud in your head with your voice. You understand it. Or you should.
But what of the reader? What if they don’t hear your voice the way you do? What if they completely misunderstand every word you fashion into sentences? What if they can’t decipher any meaning in the sentences you create? What then? And what’s worse, what if they absolutely hate everything about it? I once received a rejection letter from Judith Murdoch Literary Agency who told me I was ‘too old to write about contemporary 18 year olds’ even though my novel was ‘quite readable’. By comparison, I received a positive letter about the same novel from Headline Publishing requesting the rest of the manuscript and describing me as ‘a good storyteller with an ability to create strong and appealing characters of different ages…’
Letting your work go undoubtedly results in some kind of crisis of confidence. First of all, everyone thinks you’re writing from personal experience which really isn’t always the case. Friends all think you’re writing about them, and you’re too nice to tell them they’re way too boring to be cast in a prime role in one of your novels. Is it too low brow, too high brow, does it have enough meaning, no meaning at all, is it funny, too sad? Is it relevant, does it speak to the reader? I could go on, and on, and on. And often do – one literary agent said I had a tendency to waffle!
In life, letting go amounts to submitting yourself (not your words) to subjective scrutiny which generally involves allowing people to catch a glimpse of light reality inside the dark fiction you wrap around yourself to keep you safe and protected from mental and/or physical harm. We all have a self that we present to the world and often it’s quite different to the self that resides in your head. Which is why letting written words go out on their own, albeit with your permission, is a nerve wracking, nail biting experience that kind of makes you want to curl up into a ball in the corner of a darkened room and die.
Oh, and an agent once told me I was prone to exaggeration…
Mags Winthrop Blog 