matilda36

I cried and thought and cried and thought and watched X- Files and cried and thought about it all day and I think I finally found out what is the matter with me and writing..

I am grateful to you all my friends who very kindly keep encouraging me by asking for more fic. I love you dearly, I love betaing, giving bunnies and helping nourish all your writing talents in everyway I can, but your encouragements, requests for fics and praise of my writing talents are making me feel a bit tense. And this is not your fault, it's just the way I am.

Bear with me and I will try to explain.

I have always written in one form or another…but it has always been a need coming straight from my heart. I started with poetry because I had things I needed to express and free verse was the easy way and could be easily hidden in a drawer once written. No Alpha, no Beta, no need to re-read.

Writing this way, straight from the guts tends to be a pretty painful process. And even now, when I am trying my hand at different kind of writings that should be pleasurable like the woodhousian comedy of the Pignapping Saga, run of the mill porn, little lyrical interludes, plotted snippets and whatever I try my hand on, this pain associated with writing doesn't go away.

Writing does give me little to none pleasure at the moment. Stuff goes out unbetaed because otherwise it never goes out. My hard drive is full of half written pieces whose first draft caused pain and the second caused me to run away.

Also I am never been naïve enough to believe that we write for ourselves. Massive doses of Isherwood and burroughs cured me of this illusion years ago.

Also I have been around fandom long enough to get frustrated by the constant spam of fic written “for themselves” by writers that keep inflicting chapter after chapter of their badly written stuff on the unsuspecting public. (No reference to anybody on my F-list here. If you are going to spam me with rubbish, you aren't on my F-list) I don’t wanna be a BNF in any fandom or have hordes of worshipping minions, but I want to be sure that what I send out is good enough for me.

Only I tend to be just a bit of a perfectionist (the only woman in my previous job that argued that her evaluation was too good) and writing tend to bring out this side of my character. Nothing I will write would be good enough. Last time I posted something it took the efforts of two betas to have me post it. And in the end one of the betas did it for me.

So…I need to stop and think, re-evaluate my reasons for writing and find out if I can do it while enjoying it.

If I can do it believing believing positive comments (again, I know you are honest folks, I't me I simply cannot believe there is anything positive to be said about me).
If I can do it without systematically hating everything I write.
If I can do it without hating every fucking second of the creative process from the moment in which the words start forming in my brain to the moment I read the comments to the betaed and posted piece.

If I can’t I’ll express myself through photography or gardening or doing beta ( activity that gives me the greatest pleasure. I love helping writers, helping talent bloom and get recognition.) and writing non fic, until I will be ready

Hope this does make a bit more sense than what I wrote yesterday…and that I meneged not to offend too many people.

Thank you for your comments. They have been very useful in helping me to clarify and focus what the problem really was i.e. me.

You are real, precious friends, and I value you and your input greatly, so please be kind and make me hear your voices once again.

*hugs*