About Me

My photo
Celoron, NY, United States
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~Sylvia Plath

Amateurangstwisdom

A  few years of amateur writing have provided me with a satisfying creative outlet and confirmation that I should keep my day job.  This is a harsh reality, since I had hoped to abandon said job in favor of a Hemingway-esque existence.  I envisioned slow, easy mornings, endless cups of coffee and countless hours at the keyboard cranking out at least one original, earth-shattering masterpiece.  What I have come up with is a portfolio of mediocre pulp. This is discouraging, because I am a writer. There is a bold, poignant-yet-humorous epic within me that refuses to emerge.  I have entered a few contests and eagerly awaited the judging deadlines, spending my prize money in advance and fantasizing about publication only to see the dates roll by unacknowledged.  At first, I blame the idiots who don't recognize the brilliance of my submissions.  Immediately after writing them, and for the duration of the long wait until the close of competition, I believe that my stories and poems are solid, grammatically correct and well-constructed. To me they are warm, intelligent, and funny; in a word, unbeatable.  This fog of confidence lasts for precisely as long as it takes to find out that I have not won, or placed, or shown.  At that time I objectively re-read the pieces with a mixture of embarrassment and desolation.  Did I actually think this drivel had a chance of garnering attention? How sophomoric it is.  How trite.  And the hardest pill to swallow is not that I could do better, and failed to demonstrate my true potential, but that I've done my very best and come up short. The realization that my capacity to move readers is limited, and that I won't support myself (or even modestly supplement my income or be a starving but noteworthy artist) through writing.  Ever.  The dream is just that; and though I can respect myself for reaching for it, I have to face facts. My blog, with four followers, has hardly caught fire. What does it mean?  Do I write anyway?  As a means to what end?  Sure, most of the greats suffered rejection, there is virtue in perseverance, yadda yadda.
Maybe I'll write about a whining middle-aged pessimist.  Just for fun.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for your comment and input.