Whenever someone asks me what I write (and I get asked this quite often) I’m never sure how to respond. It’s only after a healthy period of awkward silence while I scour my brain for a good explanation of my writing that I come up with a brilliant answer like “I write fiction novels.”
Phew! Crisis averted. It’s a good thing I give such broad answers, that should cover any other questions they have… Right?
Ha! It doesn’t.
Normally right after those words stumble out of my mouth I get blindsided by a followup question like “Oh… fiction novels about what?”
I can’t be the only person that struggles with this—It is SO hard for me to tell people about my writing. Not because I don’t want people to know about it, but because my writing is my art.
In my mind, art, by its very nature is personal. It comes from the soul. When I choose to share my art with someone what I am doing is opening myself up to them and showing a piece of the real me—unpolluted, uncensored, unfiltered, me. When they judge my writing—which they will, even I judge what I read, despite how much I may try not to—they won’t just be judging my art, they’ll be judging me.
What if they don’t like it?
What if they hate it?
What if they tell me they hate it?
What if they say I should give up?
What if they say I’m not good enough?
I’m not sure I could take it.
Okay so maybe telling people about my writing isn’t quite so melodramatic.
But to a lesser extent, not to long ago this was how I felt when I let people see my writing. I had very little confidence in myself as a writer. I knew that no one would like my stories, so why bother letting anyone read them. It didn’t feel safe to let anyone else see my art.
I would have kept feeling that way If I didn’t get encouragement from a good friend. (Even if you didn’t know that you were giving me that encouragement… Hi, by the way)
I let one person read my choppy, unfinished stories, and in defiance of everything I made myself believe, they liked it. I took one big, scary step out into the open, I did something hard for my writing, and received the benefits.
This gave me the confidence boost I needed to feel comfortable letting just a couple more people read my stories. The result was praise, positive feedback, and more encouragement then I thought anyone could give me.
Suddenly my confidence shot through the proverbial roof. Not so much to give me an overly inflated ego, but enough so that I have no problem letting people read my writing anymore. Like with writing without a plan, the benefits of sharing my work far outweigh the risks.
Now I can show my writing to someone else without feeling like I’m bearing my heart and soul to them on a silver platter. I’m just showing them something I created. Simple as that.This idea probably won’t make sense to many of you, but I can’t find any other way to put it.
I no longer feel that my writing is a part of me, I’m a part of my writing.
Which is a good thing. It’s a freeing revelation; and a very important one, I think, if I want to be a professional writer.
And I don’t know that I could have learned this lesson any other way. If I hadn’t taken the risk of trusting that first person with my writing, I wouldn’t have enough confidence as a writer to be anywhere near where I am today.
……………………..Alright! boring part over. Here’s where the fun begins……………………..
It’s about time I started uploading some of my writing and share my art with all of you.
I talk about the Library a little on my about page, over the next few weeks I’ll be phasing this in to the site. The Library is what makes this blog stand out from the crowd, and heart and soul of Surviving the Novel.
Not only will I be making weekly posts talking about writing and storytelling, but I’ll also be incrementally uploading pieces of my stories to an online Library—no pressure, no strings attached. You don’t need to give me feedback, I don’t need your critiques (but I welcome both) I just want to give you something fun to read every once and a while.
Cool right?
I plan to upload one chapter a week until my current novel is finished. Any quicker then that and I might burn out, any slower and I might bore you to death with these blog posts, so consider the next few weeks the ‘Library trial run’. I’m not sure what day I’ll be uploading so stay on the lookout for The library to make it’s appearance some time this week.
(If you haven’t followed me on Facebook or Twitter do it now. There’s no better way to stay up to date with the blog and the Library)
One last thing, my current project (working title, Alexium) isn’t quite ready for uploading yet, but I do have around 16,000 words of an old storyline just about ready to go. I haven’t really seen it in a while so it should be fun for both of us. Think of it as a sampler of my writing, or a ‘warm up’ to get you ready for the real story.
So what do you think? Is this whole Library thing a good idea?