Ugly, awful demon.

Lying demon. Lying its ugly ass off, trying to derail you. Pen it up in a dark windowless corner of your brain and stabbinate it.

I remember when I was stuck on bedrest and a few Buffistas did me the great kindness of sending boxes of juicy braincandy novels to while away the weeks. In between all the gobs of mentally non-nutritive but delicious fun, there were a couple so very, spectacularly bad that I had to put them down after a couple of chapters because the pain of slogging through them was worse than the pain of bedrest.

And it's still boggling to me to think back on the sheer wretchedness of those things and then to look at Buffistas like erika and Typo and Susan who are good and thoughtful and can't find a publisher to take a chance on them, and Buffistas like Barb and Amy and my own Hec who have solid publishing histories and still get either left hanging or actively dicked around with. It's all so random it's enough to make you insane.

eta: I actually wrote and then deleted an entire rambly paragraph saying just what Susan did above. Susan's writing mindset is exactly what my acting mindset was a few years ago: I loved it so desperately that I was obsessed with getting that chance, that break, and tormented by every missed opportunity; I loved every present moment of what I was doing, but I so badly wanted the freedom to not do anything else that it made my stomach hurt.

Better than many others who are published? Yes.

Considering some of what's out there . . .

We saw Iron Man today, and I laughed my butt off at the fake Forbes cover with "so and so Takes the Reigns". This is the kind of thing making its way into huge-budget Hollywood movies. I think the average Buffista writer is entitled to think, "If you're letting that stuff through, why aren't I published!"

Yeah, that's the rub, isn't it? That with the arts, there is a huge element of pure chance. It's not a meritocracy, much as we'd like it to be. Lots of people with merit don't get recognition and lots of people with recognition don't necessarily merit it.

Because a) it's subjective and b) it's the world, which really does function a lot by who you know and other random things. So you succeed, you fail, we all want to think it's some magic key we can jiggle properly and that's why it happened. But sometimes it's just that it happened.

And sometimes it really is because of merit. There are lots of artists of all stripes who succeed because they really are just that brilliant. And certainly there are artists who fail because they're not. See any purportedly talent based reality show to get a glimpse of people with real misconceptions about their abilities.

If it were all about merit, we'd be fine, because we could look at each other and say, well, it's okay, because s/he deserved the success enjoyed. And if it were all about luck, we could just say well, it's okay, because I can't do anything about it. But it's somewhere in between, so we're all stuck jiggling the key, and are equally befuddled when our door opens or when someone else's does.

Susan, to me a drabble is like taking a quick walk away from my desk. It's a quick set of crunches, or stretches. It gets me *away* from the piece I'm working on, and blows some fresh air through the brain.

Writing in a different format, about totally different subjects, or possibly just focussing on a single sense, a brief impression, the look on a stranger's face, sundogs in an afternoon sky--those things recharge me, pull focus from where I've been concentrating till my forehead furrows and the words often splurge out in random meaning or slow to sludge. I need the break. I need a shorter focus, or a longer one, I need to breathe other air, travel at a different pace, and see other things. The drabble is a short form, it's made for these quick bites--seven M&Ms instead of a well-planned meal. Seven bright-colored, crunchy in the teeth and sweet on the tongue little sparks of joy to recharge and enable a sharper focus afterward.

Which is why I've always felt--possibly erroneously, because I'm equating my experience of life to yours--that you're not using the form to your best advantage. No one doubts your devotion to your novels, no one doubts your dedication of time and effort. But the amount of both it takes to write 100 words about something completely different? Can turn you back to your ms with a fresh eye, and possibly even a new idea.

It has me, time and time again, and since my experience is all I have to go on, I recommend you try it. You might find it helpful, or maybe not. But it can't hurt to let go your determination--which honestly feels a little grim sometimes--for long enough to write 100 words, and just see.

I'm... wow. Go to Disney and get tossed about in chlorine-soaked pools and water slides and see what happens in a day...

You know, writing and how you choose to pursue it is such an intensely personal thing. I write because I have to. I sought publication because yeah, I wanted that external validation. But even without the external validation, I'd write, because it's something I've been doing my entire life-- I've been telling stories my entire life. (Most of us here do just that-- we're so many of us superb storytellers and I learn from all of you, every day.)

But you know, for every contract, I have the 50+ rejections letters to show as well, all on my adult work, which leaves me feeling like not only was young adult writing this massive fluke that I fell into, but maybe I've been fooling myself, thinking I can actually sell an adult fiction manuscript.

I might have awards and good reviews, but I also have a contract that's on the verge of being canceled, leading me to feel that even this one thing that I thought I could do well, I can't do well enough that anyone's willing to fight for it-- except me.

And that's kind of what it comes down to. In the ultimate case of < mememe>, I have to fight for my own work, my own ability of craft, my own (if y'all will forgive me for the pretentiousness of this comment) integrity and sense of self as a writer.

In the end, that's all any of us can do. We have to take care of ourselves first and then, we're better able to offer the support and shoulders that we so often need.

If none of this makes sense, put it down to chlorine poisoning.

I know this is currently OT and I"m sorry to interrupt, but I so rarely have time at the computer these days....

Allyson, I'm so excited to read your Sam story. Ellie is only 3 and wouldn't be ready for it currently, but I'm already planning on reading it to her at bedtime once it's published.

I struggle with every word and phrase, and although I get better with practice it's never going to be or seem effortless. I envy the fuck out of you.

Please, don't. Because each and every one of us is thinking the same thing about you. And everyone else in this forum. We all just have our own voices, our own way of coming at things, and those processes are totally opaque to the outside observer. It looks like magic. But, it's not. I've been sitting here for an hour and a half throwing words at a page. I've had two false starts and now I've finally got 100 words I find acceptable. That was just this particular topic, though. Sometimes, it comes like a brainstorm and totally takes me over; other times they're like trying to choke down a pack of saltines without liquid refreshment, each word more and more painful. This one, I forced a little, because I've been lying fallow for a while and I know if I don't force myself to write, all my words will dry up, again. Once I got my POV, though, it really flowed. But, it's never really easy.

But it's somewhere in between, so we're all stuck jiggling the key, and are equally befuddled when our door opens or when someone else's does.

So much this. I look at this forum and LJ as my doors. No, I'm not paid for publishing, but I am published. It's here, for other people to read if they choose and, I hope, to enjoy. That said:

Dawn's First Blush

His head appeared over the lowest branch. "You know he's hiding something from you."

She looked over at him. This was only the third time she'd seen him there, he didn't seem to be a regular denizen. He was always alone. Well, except for her.

"What could he be hiding?" She looked around at the trees, at the earth, at the sky. "I have everything."

"Do you have one of these?" He indicated the fruit on the branch next to him.

"But, that's not hiding."

"Then, it must be yours."

She took the fruit. She blushed.

"I have no clothes."

Maybe the issue is that I've never felt at home in short forms? I seemed to be wired for saga. I've never written a short story in my life, unless you count "deleted scenes" types of fanfic, and even those are insertions into the saga that is a long-running TV show.

I enjoy drabbles as a way of concentrating my prose and trying to see just how pithy and evocative I can make a tiny segment of description or characterization. But I don't know how to turn off my saga brain. If I weren't drabbling the WIP, I'd be drabbling the characters from my interconnected romance world, or that trilogy set in ancient Greece I mean to write one of these days, or the late 18th century British-in-India stories I've been dying to write ever since I started researching Wellington before he was Wellington, or that Civil War series I'm going to write just as soon as I figure out the right approach to take...sagas all.

This is not the "Blush" I expected, but it fits.

Today I blush to think about it; my first attempt at a novel. Now I can see what’s all wrong, like all the frantic jump-cuts when I couldn’t make snarky interludes into a narrative, the structure of a roach motel with dry-rot, the blatant thefts from smarter souls that my friends never caught because I was the bookish one. I was twenty, and an arty dork that thought she was cool, and who was getting a little stoned from getting praised like Koko the gorilla when she made anything anybody could recognize. My mother had it bound one Christmas. We all thought it was a sort of coming attractions. Maybe we were right; one of my attendants swiped one looking for porn(It’s only now I can laugh thinking of his disappointment in my nubile prose. It’s still hard to confess how long I thought he could rip it off and be a big star, or that I thought I could quit college and go on tour with Jean-Claude. Even though I only met one in the coffee commercials.)