Chuck Wendig Speaks Powerfully to Writer Insecurity

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RaggedEdge

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I think anyone experiencing rejection and dejection would be encouraged by reading this recent blog post by Chuck Wendig. I love it all, especially the gaming reference to leveling up your own character. :)
 

Fuchsia Groan

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He's so right. Only I find that when I envy other writers with a passion, those are usually the writers I can learn the most from. I absorb their substance (i.e., read), digest it, and use my enhanced understanding of what they do well to make my own writing better.

Or maybe I'm delusional to think I've soaked up any wisdom from Stendhal and Keats and Kafka and Jim Thompson and Gillian Flynn to write my little YA novels ... I dunno. But that's how I deal with the terror of nothingness.

Envying somebody's craft can be productive, I think, but envying somebody's career or awards or income, never. That you just need to step away from; it's a black hole of insecurity.
 

Phaeal

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So much this.

Oh hell yeah. If I like someone's work, I don't envy them or begrudge them their successes, I just enjoy. It's when I don't like their work and they're succeeding, argh, grouse, grump, roll on floor in a frothing rage of most verdant greenness.
 

Fuchsia Groan

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It's when I don't like their work and they're succeeding, argh, grouse, grump, roll on floor in a frothing rage of most verdant greenness.

I have experienced this frothing rage of most verdant greenness from time to time, and it never ended well. :D

There's also a special place in hell for an editor who slaves to improve a writer's prose (sometimes even rewriting it from scratch), only to watch that writer get all the praise, awards and credit and not thank or even acknowledge the editor; and then the editor wonders if the writer's prose was always great, and maybe the editor was just delusional to put in the effort. Have I been that green-eyed monster? Um, yes (not in the fiction realm).
 
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Thomas Pluck

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Wendig has a knack for getting to the heart of the matter.
The thing is, following writers on twitter, I've heard the old "I'm at the point where I think everything I do is crap" from everyone from Harlan Coben to Owen Laukannen and recently Martyn Waites. All established and successful writers at different points in their careers.
It is very common, it is something we all have to battle through, and Wendig's post shows one way to avoid it.
 
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