I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint. On their behalf I deny Him, your God of no mercy. Your God who tortures men with longings they can never fulfill. He may forgive me: I shall never forgive Him.Yes, these are rough drafts written in haste, they're not supposed to be good; but it was the lack of good jokes that depressed me. I was trying to find funny scenes to excerpt on my Nano author page and had trouble finding any I liked.
I'm not a bad writer, I know that. And I don't aspire to be That Genius Who Comes Along Only Once in a Generation. But I'd like to find myself tolerably amusing.
I went to bed depressed, but decided that the next day I would re-read a couple other stories and see if that helped. I only got 'round to one (the failed nano of last year) and it didn't blow my mind, but the first paragraph I read went like this:
I won’t bore you with what it’s like to read thirteen journals of Memoirs of a Long Life. I couldn’t describe the torture anyway. Not without popping out of the book and sticking a knife in your eye.
It was enough Sliver of Hope to get me working on my plotting.
[In other news I don't recognize large swathes of that novel, and I think somewhere along the line I deleted the first part by accident. I think I underestimate how messed up I was last November.]
["Memoirs of a Long Life" is totally stolen from a PG Wodehouse story. Always loved that title.]
6 comments:
You are a good writer! Your blog attests to that. You're just undergoing a crisis of confidence.
I completely understand. I went probably a decade without writing any of my own stuff and even though I wrote some things on a freelance basis, I believed I was no longer capable of writing fiction.
I finally started a romance novel, and it was a trudge and a grind and I kept stopping it, then going back to it, over and over again for about three years. Finally gave it up and felt that my creativity was totally gone.
Then Deb Blake helped me start something that turned into a novel. The three people who read it as I wrote it said it was very good, even though I had (and still have) my doubts. But I'm going to go back to it. There was one funny bit; if I wrote one funny bit, I can write another one. And another one. Until I'm done.
I think that's how you need to approach this. Write one funny bit. Write some more stuff. Writer another funny bit. As they say, bird by bird, or, one bite at a time.
You can totally do this!
One of my favourite titles is, 'Midnight at the Well of Souls'.
@Skye - Thank you!
@widders - Memoirs of a Long Life is the book one of Wodehouse's characters is writing and everyone is trying to steal.
Re Midnight--my husband loved that series.
Poor Salieri ... his rep was never the same after that movie.
I recommend that if you want to recognize your own funny - you might want to lay off of my darling P.G. for a while. His funny is very contagious.
Hey, in fact, maybe if you read something very stern it might bring out your funny. Of course, you're probably not the self-destructive rebel that I am who only can deal with stern by being irreverent. (Irreverence being good funny in my book)
Or you could ignore this whole rambly, stupid comment if you like.
@JJJ - I promise I haven't touched him in a couple months! And not "stupid rambly" -- I think it's very good advice. I was thinking of starting a Terry Pratchett, and decided to leave off for the moment. I'm reading a serious fantasy novel, and Infinite Jest--which is "literary" but supposed to be funny in a weird way. So I think I'm safe there.
All this to say... thanks! I think you're right.
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