or maybe "being a moron masochist," I just don't know. So, the place where I'm getting into BS literary arguments--did I mention that this is also the forum that reinforces my low self-esteem about my writing? I didn't mention that? It is.
In 2002, the owner of this forum asked me and three others to write weekly essays for the home page. Every single little think piece I wrote was ignored. Even a short story written from the POV of one of my dogs was ignored. At the same time, another member wrote huge post, starting with things like "The life you live. The life you own. The life you left bundled on a randomly chosen doorstep. Abandoned. A tangential resting place. From the sidewalk. Hidden beneath the eaves. Sheltered and soaked. Mortgaged. Taken in and raised by wolves. Sinister eyes staring into the depths of a forming soul. Claiming territory. Picking away at the wide-eyed ambitions dancing along the freshly cut blades of an expansive front lawn. With strangers for neighbors. And friends far away. The sounds from outside amounting to nothing more than the limits of a tattered imagination." His pieces were slobbered over and he was acclaimed as being an amazing writer, a gifted artist, etc.
I gave up after six months. I told the site owner I quit and stood firm when he tried to persuade me to keep going. I gave up writing for almost two years, convinced that I was incapable of producing anything worth reading. In December of '04, I found Literotica and started writing there. Despite quite a bit of good feedback and support, I still don't believe I'm a real writer. I don't write stuff like I quoted above, I just sit down and let the story in my brain dribble out through my fingers. I don't revise and agonize and reflect and struggle. Slowly, I have come to be okay with that. I'm too thin-skinned to try to get published, so I'll continue to scribble and dribble and share my blitherings with anyone who wants to look.
I do need to STOP hanging around arguing with people who respected my writing so little that they wouldn't even comment on it and who fawned on someone whose most striking characteristic as a writer (imnsho) was a calculatedly befuddling effect on his audience. But then, I tell myself that and still hold myself to some artistic standard of "real writing" and spiral into hatred of my own silly pieces again.
*sigh*
5 comments:
Oh, who gives a fig about them anyway?
We both know that the collective number on the self-important scale is off the register there anyway.
ROE and you were from 2 different planets when it came to writing. His was all wordy and incomprehensible, nice man that he was, and yours was more down to earth.
I simply think that those who post there, you know, the ones who run everyone off, can't accept liking something that is more tangible and real.
You need to write for you, and say to hell with those who don't like it. No one has universal appeal, that I can think of off hand. (Speaking of NOONE, he tries to write in the style of ROE and all I can say is ZZZZZZZ.
I non-lesbianally :heart: you, my leetle cabbage (why the HELL is that an endearment in French, anyway?)!
I know all this stuff intellectually. Feeling it in the gut is rather harder. You have my permission to smack me as needed.
Thanks. :-)
*Smack*
I made an interesting analogy in my mind as I dustmopped.
Remember the emporer's clothes?
It is a similar situation.
No one can admit that they see the writing as a befuddlement lest their level of importance drop.
The sad part is I hate picking apart ROE's writing. He PM'd me now and then and was a genuinely nice man.
May he rest in peace.
PS, they have a meal called " un pet au feu" which appears to mean fart with fire. Thye are weird but the let les shiens eat in the reastaurantes. That is civilized.
I :heart: you again. I'd rather read your stuff and laugh until I snort than tax my brain with anything impenetrable.
PFKAS has a point. I'm of the "if they can't understand it, you aren't doing anything" school of writing. Other folks are from the "I am masturbating in public how dare you say this isn't ART" school. We had really fierce marathon writing competitions. The judges loved them, but the editors loved us. And they were wimps when we poked holes in their punctuation with our copies of Strunk and White.
Those were the days. I wonder if I still have my school jacket...?
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