Susan, I'm being blunt: I think your need to compete, even with yourself and what you (possibly falsely) perceive to be your limitations and failings, is not good for the writing. Honestly. There's no prize. And it doesn't make you happy, either, that sense of competition.

Writers write. It's what we do. Just write. And don't confuse "I have to be published!" with "I want to be really great at this!" They aren't the same, and getting published isn't a reward or a doorprize. That's not how it works.

Amy, 99% of the time, I have the easy flow. But that 1% of the time is a bitch on wheels. For Eyes in the Fire, I wrote like a tap draining for the first 80% of the book. I knew exactly how to write the ending. And I couldn't do it. I sat there for six weeks, trying to write the ending, and every time I tried, I got the shakes.

I went to Hawaii for a week, and lay in the sun, and swam with dolphins. Then I came home and finished the book.

Anyone who says it's freeflow 100% of the time is totally full of shit.

French toast with powdered sugar:

Susan, I hope this doesn't seem like ganging up. I'm actually trying to be encouraging here, not accusatory. I just don't want to see you beating yourself up for not being published yet, or not being in some way "good enough," when I think you're a very talented writer who picked a hard sell style for her first book. So few people hit it out of the park on the first try, it's not worth comparing, to me at least. You wouldn't believe how many good writers I saw over the years who just didn't have the right book, or the right setting or time period. It is a very competitive business.

Longwinded way of saying: DON'T QUIT WRITING. (Asscaps and all, here.) You are talented, and you are ambitious, and you have the perseverance to keep at it.

But by whose standards?

My standards are kind of fuzzy, actually. I think what's happening is that for the first time in my life I'm running up against big fish in a small pond syndrome in an area that matters to me. You know how kids who are brilliant in their small-town high schools are supposed to run into reality in college and get taken down a peg? It didn't happen to me. College was just as easy as high school, only a hell of a lot more fun and interesting, and I got the same kind of ego-strokes from my professors about how smart I was and what a brilliant writer I was that I got in high school. So I wasn't expecting it to be this hard, because it never was before.

Which probably makes me sound horrible and egotistical, and I should just stop trying to explain.

No! It's a good epiphany! (It's just that sometimes they're so personal they have more of an atom bomblike consequence for the epiphanizee than anyone in the general vicinity.)

Speaking from my own experience as a published writer, I went through something much similar, including weeping fits because I wasn't the best-ever writer at Clarion West. I began to approach writing much more as an art and a craft, and to take joy in the realization that if I work at it the rest of my life, I'll still be improving and finding new aspects of prose and characterization and plot thirty years from now.

(nodding at both theo and Amy)

Exactly. It's a very good epiphany, but don't let it eat your face, and there's no reason to stop writing, and we are not ganging up on you.

Which probably makes me sound horrible and egotistical

Not at all, and I think I do understand where you're coming from. Real life can suck, is the thing. This is why fiction is often better.

I think I sounded pompous before, too, without meaning to -- there are all kinds of great writers out there, writing everything from romance to sci fi to horror to nonfiction, as well as the traditionally lauded Booker Prize et all winners of "serious" fiction. Not all of them are widely known as great writers, though, and many of them get qualified. Lots of people will say Ruth Rendell is a great *mystery* writer, when I think she's just a damn fine writer, no clarification necessary.

But in the end, it's all subjective. One reader's great writer is another's snoozefest, and vice versa. I just try to be happy with what I'm writing, and give myself room to improve, as Theodosia points out.

I began to approach writing much more as an art and a craft, and to take joy in the realization that if I work at it the rest of my life, I'll still be improving and finding new aspects of prose and characterization and plot thirty years from now

This is where I'm at right now. I want to write, but I've left it so late to start. I've taken no writing courses since the basic composition course they forced on me in college almost 20 years ago. It stood me in good stead for term papers and the like, but it's too basic for good creative writing. I see a lot of fiction out there that I say to myself "I could do better." But, really, not. Because I've never taken the time to put any effort into it. I don't have the nuts and bolts of writing. I'm stictly the winging it kind of writer. Now, I want to put just a little more effort into it. See if I can get people to read and to like it, and if not like it to still get some feeling from it. To have evoked a response. To find that commonality of experience that we all share. I have no serious hope of being published, I don't know if I'm that kind of writer. I write to please myself more than anyone else. It's only gravy if it reaches a larger audience. So, yeah, what Theodosia said, but in my longwinded way.

Nodding at Amy and Deb and Theo (and grabbing and running off and making love to "epiphanzee"), and also not with the ganging up, but with the go you! with the epiphany. The interesting thing? It probably won't be your last.

I do think once you get past the shakes this has given you, the writing will be different. Better. Easier in a way, because you'll have (partly) gotten out of your own way.

I have a friend who says to me, "writers write. They don't sell, they don't plan, they don't, or shouldn't have to. They should write." It's too bad that it really isn't true in today's market, because it's the only way to figure out how, you know? To do it. So, another "Yeah, you!" here. And by the way, Happy Birthday!

Sail, I love your LJ posts. Do you have fictional stories you want to tell, or do you just want to write? Because journaling and memoir certainly have a place in today's market, and I think you do that extremely well. I haven't read fiction by you, you might do that just as well. I simply mean that you don't have to write fiction to write.

Damn - I didn't see Amy's post from yesterday.

Short stories, sending, ma'am.