“You Just Don’t Get It”
The ideas I’ll be discussing in this piece are opinions I once I had myself. I have done these things, I have said them, and then I learned how to look beyond them. Being a writer is a constant process of self-evaluation. In the 12+ years since I decided to start writing, I went through being a teenager, high school, university, and am now a few years into life afterwards. Life changes, your writing style changes, and your awareness of the world around you changes. When I first entered those writing workshops in university, I had a lot of ideas that were obstacles to my growth early on. It would take months or years to recognize these self-imposed challenges as I learned how to be an effective writer in a new way.
Today I would like to look back and share these ideas as I have thought them or as I have heard the over the years from other writers around me…
To write or publish your work is hard. It is a physical, mental, and emotional load to complete that work. Naturally, many feelings are attached to whatever you write. A lot of these thoughts we will be talking about today come from those emotional places. The way I want us to focus on it is to see how these ideas or beliefs may stunt your creative growth as a writer.
What ideas am I talking about?
Have you ever heard someone say, “My writing is just so out there. No one understands my stories because they are not able to think up on my level. That’s why no one likes my work.” –friends, this is the assumption that your writing is great and needs no editing. If I said, “I am a genius, and you are not smart because you cannot understand the great things I have to say…” at what point do we question if those things are actually great? What if the writing was just bad and that’s why no one understood it? Isn’t it better to improve and develop your work to create an understanding instead of finding fault in the reader? Afterall, what is a book that no one can read? We write to be understood.
Let’s talk about these little traps of thoughts that I have heard and seen in the classroom, workshops, high school, college, and in the professional world.
“My Writing is Good”
When I was a young writer, I was scared to share my work. I didn’t even call myself a “writer” because I didn’t think I had the right too. The first time I did share a piece of my writing with a friend in high school, I was very proud of the work. I thought it was the best thing I had ever created.
After reading, my friend told me they didn’t understand what was happening in the story. The characters were mentioned and not described, the setting was nonexistent, and my dialogue was stilted. It’s hard to imagine a scene with those challenges. Instead of wondering how I could improve my writing, I was instantly defensive and thought to myself, “They just don’t understand. They don’t get it.” My thoughts were blaming the reader’s ability to comprehend instead of seeing where I might have gone wrong.
It would take years of workshop classes at my university until I began to learn the process of improving my work and thought process as a writer. I learned that it wasn’t my reader’s inability to understand what I was saying…it was my inability to clearly show the readers what was going on.
As a writer, it is your job to show your readers the story. Good punctuation, grammar, plots, effectively showing instead of telling, and more are all essential too. If your reader cannot understand something, that means you need to go back and make sure you write it in a way they do understand.
If you find yourself getting defensive while receiving feedback on your story or are caught up in the cycle of “my writing is good, you are wrong…” you will be missing out on the following:
Learning how to improve your writing.
Looking at opportunities to increase your story’s impact.
Closing yourself off from listening to advice or learning new things.
Of course, there is always bad advice and feedback. Be sure to read my older weeklies, “Good VS Bad Criticism” and “Types of Feedback.”
As a side note to this entire section: I was a stubborn writer when I was younger. Being told your writing doesn’t make sense (even said nicely) can be discouraging. In a weird way, my narrow view of thinking “my writing is great” in the beginning, kept me writing. I didn’t give up because it felt like I had to prove something. While this is not a healthy or a sustainable way to work, I do recognize the place it had in my journey to becoming a professional writer.
Business Versus the Art World
I am sure a lot of professional artists and writers will throw their hat in the ring of this conversation, but I wanted to talk about what I hear a lot.
“My writing/art will never make it because everyone expects business-like or only serious stuff in the real world.” This statement, while it can be true in many situations, often rubs me the wrong way. I’ve seen it more with beginners in art and writing who might be overwhelmed with a lack of commissions, job opportunities, and more. This is a serious thing to face because it is very hard to put your work out there, make money (if that is your goal), and more.
What I want to point out about this way of thinking is the same idea as “you just don’t get it.” Be careful saying this and then, in turn, not evaluating your own work and seeing how you may improve to conquer those challenges. If you are rejected by a publication or a job you wanted, that is awful! At the same time, this will most likely happen to you. It will happen many times. That’s how job searches and attempts at success work! But what is worse is if you throw your hands up, call it hopeless, blame the industry, and then stop trying and improving.
When rejection does happen, the most crucial thing is to take a step back and look at your work. Pause and self-reflect. Ask yourself if you can improve or make any changes to your work, process, or widen your search to see if you missed another potential opportunity.
Here are some questions you may find helpful when reflecting on your work. This is not to dissuade your work; this is to look for opportunities of growth.
What is my art or writing?
What are my skills?
What do I bring to the table?
Instead of thinking you are great and blaming the world for having a different focus try to think, “What can I do to improve?” It's important to ask, “Have I truly mastered this? Where can I grow? Where can I get help?”
Grammar and a Good Story
I’ve heard a few times, “It doesn’t matter if my story isn’t grammatically correct or even written well—as long as my ideas are good, it’s a good story and that shouldn’t matter.” This is a big no!! First off, this is someone who is straight up refusing to edit their own work. You can do whatever you want with your work but don't try to make up for the lack of editing to say it’s great how it is because you don’t want to put that work in. I won't go down the rabbit hole of saying how insulting this is to people who put the work in and polish their pieces; but, it's important to recognize the effect bad grammar or punctuation can have on an otherwise good story.
When watching a movie at a theater, have you ever experienced an audience member who keeps sneezing during the film? Have you ever painted, and your old paint brush keeps getting bristles stuck in the paint? These examples are interruptions of an experience. If a reader is reading a story and the punctuation or grammar is incorrect it will be the same problem as these situations. You can be reading a captivating scene, but a bad sentence can literally rip the reader right out of the story and distract them in that moment. It is important that your reader is immersed in the story to not only enjoy it but to keep turning those pages. It's already a struggle to keep your readers attention but if you have mistakes in your text, they will put the book down. If that person in the audience keeps sneezing, I just might leave the movie because I want to enjoy it to the fullest instead of having misplaced commas and dangling modifiers all over the book.
I understand the sentiment that a good story is a good story but arguing that editing will not make it any better is just a lazy excuse. I know I’m being harsh about this. You can totally publish your story or share however you want but it is important to learn how to fix your mistakes and become a better writer instead of passing the blame to readers who find those errors distracting. If you don't want to fix your mistakes what are your plots and characters like? This lack of attention to improving your work will show in all parts of your story, not just the punctuation.
Conclusion
A lot of this week's ideas are just things I have heard over the years as I dreamed of being a writer, studied, and worked with other writers. All these thoughts are common and are not inherently bad. Like I mentioned above, it can help you sometimes such as a determination to keep writing if you think your writing is great or provide the chance to see an opportunity where you can grow. These thoughts wow obstacles on their own are all steps in the creative process of becoming and being a writer.
With all these views there is nothing inherently wrong with being proud of your work, thinking there is not a place for it or thinking you don't need to edit anything because you like it as it is--that is perfectly okay! I just wanted to talk about these points because I want to give some opportunities to see how you can improve your writing. These are difficult conversations to have. These are hard points to come to terms with but many years ago someone pointed them out to me and now I want to point them out to you.
Next week we will be continuing with this same theme. I want to talk about ideas around writing as a job as well as the process. In short, you cannot become a novelist in one day! I will be sharing some tips and tricks next week on how to look for jobs, why it is important to improve your writing, and where to learn more.
Best,
Danni Lynn, Evangeline40003