Suffering for Your Art? Poor Baby

In today’s Journal

* Quote of the Day
* Suffering for Your Art? Poor Baby
* Grief, and Casting About
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quote of the Day

“I’m going to go do this crazy thing. I’m going to start this company selling books online.” Jeff Bezos

Suffering for Your Art? Poor Baby

At The Passive Voice this morning I found this article: “You Don’t Need to Suffer to Make Art—But It Can Help.”

Folks, let me tell you something. All those writers out there who are “suffering” for their “art” are self-absorbed snots, and they wouldn’t know a unique, original story if it slipped up the back of their leg and bit them on the bum.

Here’s the comment I left on the article:

“Those who proclaim they ‘suffer’ for their art are either self-absorbed or too stupid to stop doing something that causes them mental, emotional or physical distress. What they’re promoting isn’t art, it’s artifice. It isn’t about suffering. It’s about making sure others are aware they’re suffering.

“The OP reminds me of every self-important author, forearm laid wistfully across forehead, who during a book launch says something like, ‘Oh, writing fiction is such terrible drudgery, but I have the calling, and so I suffer for my art’.

“Pure, still-steaming mushroom fodder.”

Or as one of my characters said in my mind as I read the article, “Whatta load’a crap.”

Don’t buy into it, folks. Don’t be self-absorbed. I suggest you don’t even see yourself as an “author.” Too haughty.

A writer is one who writes. An author is one who has written. Why would anyone want to place any importance at all on “having-written”? That’s like putting more importance on “having-lived” than on living.

Me? At the best of times, I’m only a writer and a storyteller.

I’m a person who is fortunate enough to serve as the conduit for my characters’ stories, nothing more. I have no idea where the characters came from, and I don’t know what will happen in any story in advance.

The story unfolds (and I write it down) as the characters and I run through it together. What could be more spontaneous and fun than that? More importantly, why in the world would anyone want to rob himself or herself of that exhilirating experience?

What must that thought process be? Well, you read my opinion in the comment I left on the OP.

I do feel sorry for those poor “authors,” but not because they’re forcing themselves to slog through the terrible drudgery of writing fiction. I feel sorry for them because they’ll probably spend their entire life succumbing to fear that has absolutely no basis in reality and zero consequences.

Still, to each his or her own.

You do you.

Grief, and Casting About

Okay, a personal update from my camp to yours—

Believe it or not, I’m still in mourning.

I know. I wouldn’t have imagined the grief would have held on this long or to this depth either.

After all, April 11 happened almost four months ago. And to be completely honest, I haven’t mourned half that long for any of the two-legs I’ve lost during my 70 years.

Anyway, the episodes of longing and anguish are waning in frequency if not in depth. I felt snapped in two last night for a little over a half-hour, but it’s been days since the previous time.

I am of two minds, of course. I want the episodes to stop, but I never want them to stop. And either way, I never want to forget my little girl.

Anyway, enough of that boring stuff.

I really am aware that we all have problems and matters we have to deal with, whether physical, mental, or emotional. So thanks for letting me wonder aloud for a few moments what (the hell) is going on within myself.

On the other side of my life—the side that’s available to me when I’m focused enough on other things to keep my thoughts from settling on the absence of that little angel—I’m still doing double duty:

• I’m still attempting to gentle myself into a new routine that will include at least 4 hours per day of fiction writing, and
• I’m casting about for a story or a set of characters who will pull me into their world and keep me there for the duration.

Auditions are ongoing at least once or twice per day in the form of either revisiting one of the story openings or partial openings I’ve written recently, or quickly scribbling down a new opening from a character or line of dialogue or situation that pops into my head from nowhere.

Even that little bit of writing is a great deal of fun and a considerable relief from the other side. I hope to be back to my version of normal sooner rather than later, of course, but it will be what it will be.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “The psychopathic path to success” at https://knowablemagazine.org/article/mind/2023/psychopathic-path-to-success. Goes to characterization, your honor.

See “Niche Marketing Part One” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/niche-marketing-part-one-2/.

See “What to do when you’re bored of everything” at https://mattpmn.substack[dot]com/p/what-to-do-when-youre-bored-of-everything.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………………… 860

Writing of “Pretend Writer”

Day 1…… 2322 words. Total words to date…… 2322

Writing of “Untitled Stern Talbot Mystery”

Day 1…… 190 words. Total words to date…… 190

Writing of “Marvin McTavish Decides”

Day 1…… 326 words. Total words to date…… 326
Day 2…… 346 words. Total words to date…… 672

Writing of “A Midnight Sketch”

Day 1…… 1341 words. Total words to date…… 1341

Writing of Rose Padilla (WCG10SF5)

Day 1…… 4283 words. Total words to date…… 4283
Day 2…… 3963 words. Total words to date…… 8246
Day 3…… 1463 words. Total words to date…… 9709
Day 4…… 2445 words. Total words to date……12154

Total fiction words for July……… 4525
Total fiction words for 2023………… 143100
Total nonfiction words for July… 15110
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 146660
Total words for the year (fiction and nonfiction)…… 261207

Calendar Year 2023 Novels to Date…………………… 2
Calendar Year 2023 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2023 Short Stories to Date………… 4
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)………………………………… 73
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……………………… 221
Short story collections…………………………………………. 31

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark, adherence to Heinlein’s Rules, and that following the myths of fiction writing will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.