Karl, your drabble gave me a shiver, because I wonder that, too.

This is kind of not a drabble, but it's what came to mind. David Simon still likes carrots, btw.

Five Things I Know About Falling

1. A bullet won’t really knock you flat. If you don’t know you’ve been hit, you’re likely to keep walking.(Well, not me, most people though.)

2. I’ve fallen in love about six times this year. Have not “closed the deal” with any of them. At least they all know I’m alive, except the two fictional ones.

3. I frequently have dreams where I just fall for the whole thing.

4. If you fall in a parking lot, you can get a scar on your wrist that can make clipboard bearing strangers think you used to cut yourself. They don’t exactly believe your “fell at Blockbuster a long time ago,” story either.

5. The average non- Buffista can fall asleep in twenty minutes. Buffistas generally take longer

Been away; catching up. I like you guys.

I am Susan, and Sail, and Cindy! Wow. I'm all over the place. Susan, I've had that epiphany, too. I've always been good at everything I did, without half trying - or else I just don't do it. In my head, one is either good at something, or not; learning and practicing and putting in time to get better, why would anyone do that for something they weren't good at? The idea of learning to be good at something, no matter whether you were good from the get-go, is a fairly new one for me. And I think I get what you mean by "worthy". For me, at least, it relates to my need to validate my existence by getting validation from others on things that I do. (Yeah, I know how self-destructive this is. I'm getting it under control.) So, I write when people tell me I'm good at it. To write just because I want to, with no expectation of making money, well, I've always been told that was a frivolous waste of time. (I'm getting over that one, too.) I think I'm in a similar place as Sail, as I haven't written anything seriously in nearly 20 years - maybe never, if "serious" means "with dedication and discipline", and not "looking to be published". I'm winging it. Like Cindy said, I'm not sure I can be arsed to be the best I can be. Or maybe I'm just afraid the best I can be won't be good enough, so why bother.

And I'm taking what deb and victor and all said about validation, and the real reason to write, to heart. You're all quite right. When I say "won't be good enough," I have to stop myself and ask, good enough for what? Because publication has never been my real goal. So what is? Why should I write down these stories that are all comfortably complete in my head? Why should I bother?

Well, for the love of it. For the joy of it. For that reason, or not at all. I think that's really the only good reason for doing anything.

Except cleaning cat boxes.

Zenkitty, when I was in middle and high school, and writing my "stories" in my school notebooks, my mother told me I was "wasting" paper and ink. It took me literally decades to get over that, and to feel it was okay to "waste" not only time but paper--and not only paper, but to actually buy special notebooks to write in, and bottles of ink in special colors just for writing.

Take that, stoopid internal critic.

Aaaand... cereal

Writing fanfic is fun, and it's a good exercise for me, too. I tend to write the same characters, and it's good to push myself into writing someone different. To write someone else's characters and keep their voices and actions true, someone else's universes and stay true to it, is a challenge. It makes me get inside a mind I don't already know well.

I write a lot of vignettes; one of the few longer pieces I've actually finished was a slash fanfic, and I'm so proud of that thing. I still sometimes get good feedback on it, and it makes me feel all cuddly. Even though it's not my world or my characters, I did a good job, and that's one of the things I look to for (self) validation when I start wondering if I can really write at all.

Writing fanfic is where I learned to write men(insofar as I'm able) Of course, I started off slowly in that I had Timmy Bayliss to write for, and he may be more of a girl than I.

Like Cindy said, I'm not sure I can be arsed to be the best I can be.

When I say "won't be good enough," I have to stop myself and ask, good enough for what?

These, and my tagline by Dorothy Parker. It's a combination of, do I really want to do that much work and a "what's it to you if I do or I don't?" The only person my writing should really matter to is me. I'd like it if it called to other people on the same level, I hope it's good, but in the long run it's just for me. It has to be for it to be truly meaningful. And why write if it's just going to be empty words and platitudes for other people? At least, that's where I'm coming from. I can understand that for someone wanting to make it on a commercial level, they have more variables to take into account. Some I'm not ready to consider yet, so my writing in the meantime will be just for me. But I hope everyone here will read it, relate to it, give it helpful criticism, help me grow as a person and a writer.

This conversation reminded me of something I read about the Beatles, back when. They played some very crappy clubs starting out, and John's Auntie Mimi wanted him to go back and take the civil service test. But they would get together afterward and John would say "Where we going, fellas?"
And the guys would say "To the top, Johnny!"

And it would finish off that they'd say "To the toppermost of the poppermost." I want that. By Thursday. Guess I have to finish something first. Damn it.

I tend to write the same characters

That's a very good point! I tend to write moderately sane, well-adjusted, fairly intelligent, mellow people. Other people's universes force you to deal with people who despise each other, true sadistic evil, and bad, senseless things happening to nice folks. When I was writing Star Wars fanfic back in the day (a quick, fond glance to the file drawer full of paper), I had several weeks' worth of crisis over the moral advisability of writing violence. I had to keep telling myself, "You're writing about a war, you're writing about people fighting a war. They're not throwing daisies at each other."

If nothing else, fanfic has forced me to consider a lot of the philosophical bases of behavior and why people act the way they do. It's enabled me to explore the inside of my mind, and if for nothing else but that, I'll never regret "wasting the paper and ink." Back to wasting electrons.