The Paralysis of Perfection
Feb. 9th, 2019 08:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roselightfairy[The following is a thing I wrote a couple of months ago, when I was in the middle of trying to write Bane-- a story I struggled with and fought every step of the way, and did not feel I came out the winner. I feel like sharing it here because it... I dunno, seems like the kind of thing that would be well-shared here, and this platform is so dead that I want interaction.
So, under the cut: my thoughts on writing, rejection, confidence, and where fanfic fits in.]
The trouble with writing – or, should I say, my trouble with writing, is how much it matters to be confident you can do it in the first place.
Two years ago, I decided I was going to try something. I was going to send out writing to magazines. Even if I got rejected, I reasoned, I was writing. I was trying. I was submitting. I found pieces I’d written that I liked; I formatted them the way Google told me to; I struggled through cover letters and submission statements – and then I sent them on their way with a silent scream into the echo chamber of my mind, a chamber which I immediately closed off, and sealed, and tried to forget.
And when my rejection letters came – kind rejections, really, kinder than I had any right to hope for – I saved them into a folder in my documents I haven’t revisited since, and I slammed that chamber shut again before any reverberation of that echoing scream could escape.
I haven’t reopened the door since.
I’ve been posting fanfiction for years now, but only for a year have I been an active part of any fandom. In the past, I would dump the fic into the void and leave it there for any to stumble across it. More did than I could have imagined, for a first-time writer, but the thing about FanFiction.Net is that it’s pretty isolated. You have your profile, and nothing else. Conversations with readers were rare and private, and I started hating the username I came up with about two seconds after I made the profile, so I hardly had the desire to publicize it. I was never a fandom participant; I didn’t discover Tumblr, common fanon, or the idea of headcanon-stories, until much later.
And then, years later, I made a Tumblr.
And then I got into Lord of the Rings.
And then I made an AO3 account.
And then… I had readers.
I had always had readers, but never before had they interacted with me as a person, beyond each individual story. Never before had they sought me on any platform beyond my fic profile. Never before had I had anywhere to be sought.
And now, suddenly and again, I face the possibility of rejection.
In so many ways, fanfic is a safer place than traditional publishing to write without fear. Your work is never vetted, since the online platforms can be used by everyone. You don’t have to edit if you don’t want to; most people understand that you’re doing this for free in your spare time; you’re writing something that people – if they’ve clicked on it – are almost sure they want to read… and if they change their minds, most of them are nice enough not to tell you why.
But now there are comments. And hit counts, and kudos, and people who have high expectations and keep on raising the bar. And now I am writing a story, one for which I once had high hopes, one which I want to post to commemorate a date no one cares about but me. I am writing this story if it kills me; I am trying to experiment and to push my own boundaries, and I fear that I will lose for it all I have gained.
Oh, but this story is bad! I would love to have a more eloquent word for it, to explain the ways it is disappointing me, the things I wish I could do with it that I cannot, the leagues outside of my comfort zone that I have had to venture to write it. But there is none. It’s just… bad.
And I feel like I can’t write bad things anymore.
The paralysis of perfectionism is only exacerbated when I know my work will be read, when I can feed my own words into the voices of others. I know my readers will not be as cruel to me as I am to myself – but what they think, I will never know, and what they think may well be all the worst insults I hurl at myself.
I went to an outdoor-recreation-business meet ‘n’ greet with some family today. The other three all had services to offer, businesses to market. I’ve considered trying proofreading or writing copy, and perhaps they could even use my help – but I suppose, in so many ways, I don’t really believe I can do it. I listened to the rise and fall of conversation around me, the babble of excited voices – all these people with businesses and passions, who seemed to know so well what they were doing. I listened to them all and stood there, a blocked fanfic author with a marginal knowledge of commas, and I admired the “Fun Art” on the walls, and I found no words to speak.
So, under the cut: my thoughts on writing, rejection, confidence, and where fanfic fits in.]
The trouble with writing – or, should I say, my trouble with writing, is how much it matters to be confident you can do it in the first place.
Two years ago, I decided I was going to try something. I was going to send out writing to magazines. Even if I got rejected, I reasoned, I was writing. I was trying. I was submitting. I found pieces I’d written that I liked; I formatted them the way Google told me to; I struggled through cover letters and submission statements – and then I sent them on their way with a silent scream into the echo chamber of my mind, a chamber which I immediately closed off, and sealed, and tried to forget.
And when my rejection letters came – kind rejections, really, kinder than I had any right to hope for – I saved them into a folder in my documents I haven’t revisited since, and I slammed that chamber shut again before any reverberation of that echoing scream could escape.
I haven’t reopened the door since.
I’ve been posting fanfiction for years now, but only for a year have I been an active part of any fandom. In the past, I would dump the fic into the void and leave it there for any to stumble across it. More did than I could have imagined, for a first-time writer, but the thing about FanFiction.Net is that it’s pretty isolated. You have your profile, and nothing else. Conversations with readers were rare and private, and I started hating the username I came up with about two seconds after I made the profile, so I hardly had the desire to publicize it. I was never a fandom participant; I didn’t discover Tumblr, common fanon, or the idea of headcanon-stories, until much later.
And then, years later, I made a Tumblr.
And then I got into Lord of the Rings.
And then I made an AO3 account.
And then… I had readers.
I had always had readers, but never before had they interacted with me as a person, beyond each individual story. Never before had they sought me on any platform beyond my fic profile. Never before had I had anywhere to be sought.
And now, suddenly and again, I face the possibility of rejection.
In so many ways, fanfic is a safer place than traditional publishing to write without fear. Your work is never vetted, since the online platforms can be used by everyone. You don’t have to edit if you don’t want to; most people understand that you’re doing this for free in your spare time; you’re writing something that people – if they’ve clicked on it – are almost sure they want to read… and if they change their minds, most of them are nice enough not to tell you why.
But now there are comments. And hit counts, and kudos, and people who have high expectations and keep on raising the bar. And now I am writing a story, one for which I once had high hopes, one which I want to post to commemorate a date no one cares about but me. I am writing this story if it kills me; I am trying to experiment and to push my own boundaries, and I fear that I will lose for it all I have gained.
Oh, but this story is bad! I would love to have a more eloquent word for it, to explain the ways it is disappointing me, the things I wish I could do with it that I cannot, the leagues outside of my comfort zone that I have had to venture to write it. But there is none. It’s just… bad.
And I feel like I can’t write bad things anymore.
The paralysis of perfectionism is only exacerbated when I know my work will be read, when I can feed my own words into the voices of others. I know my readers will not be as cruel to me as I am to myself – but what they think, I will never know, and what they think may well be all the worst insults I hurl at myself.
I went to an outdoor-recreation-business meet ‘n’ greet with some family today. The other three all had services to offer, businesses to market. I’ve considered trying proofreading or writing copy, and perhaps they could even use my help – but I suppose, in so many ways, I don’t really believe I can do it. I listened to the rise and fall of conversation around me, the babble of excited voices – all these people with businesses and passions, who seemed to know so well what they were doing. I listened to them all and stood there, a blocked fanfic author with a marginal knowledge of commas, and I admired the “Fun Art” on the walls, and I found no words to speak.
