Writers, do you ever get discouraged... (sentence, quote, stories)

[Mightyqueen801]

Originally Posted by cpg35223

One major observation. In a perfect world, great writing would be instantly recognized while crap would hit the wastebasket.

But the thing one must realize, in any pursuit in life, that only persistence is omnipotent. Plenty of writers received bushels of rejection slips before hitting it big.

Goes without saying. That's the mantra we all are trained to hear from the first day we decide to write, isn't it? And it's true, of course. We all know the "John Grisham got 116 rejections before he was published" story.

But it doesn't change the fact that we will still feel that frustration from time to time! Knowing something doesn't make an emotion vanish. Just wanted to voice it once again.

[415_s2k]

Originally Posted by Lamplight

I think I get more discouraged when I read a novel that's really good, because I start thinking, "Wow, I could never even come close to that. Why am I even trying?" When I see something really bad that managed to be published, I actually have hope.

Same here.

If I read something seriously crap, I think to myself, "why the hell haven't I actually published anything yet?"

Then, I read some Tolstoy and think to myself, "that's why."

A few years back, I read a then-new fast-paced crime-thriller that was really, really good that came recommended from a writing journal. I stayed up into the night, unable to put it down, and then got to the last three chapters, which basically screamed "I have a deadline to meet, crap crap crap!"

New characters that were obviously just deus ex machina.
Totally implausible and divergent story arc that made you wonder if it was literally just cut-and-paste from another of his works-in-progress.
Final chapter that was supposed to be a newspaper article chronicling the book's events.
So, so, so many loose ends.

But, the book managed to get published and get props in a journal. It made me sit back and think of what it would have been like had the ending been written in as deft a fashion as the initial part of the book, and it actually gave me encouragement to try to keep momentum up from beginning to end in the book I was working on at the time.

[supernaut112]

Oh, writer bees, I have an agent, have ghostwritten and published, and I continue to be appalled at what passes for contemporary fiction these days. I feel very privileged to show my work to the public — it must be as perfect as I can possibly make it. But the world of publishing is driven by other factors, such as what they feel is marketable. A shame. A real shame ...

[DaynaKH]

Books like "Twilight" come to mind... I think, "what on earth makes this book worth publishing?"

Then I realize it's the updated Romeo and Juliet--minus the time changing language, and tragic ending. It's for the new generation of readers--which saddens me. Stories aren't deep anymore, they don't seem to delve past romance and adventure, as if that IS all the meaning in life. A good partner and a fun time.

Recently I've been revisiting "Jane Eyre" and "To Kill a Mockingbird" and I'm gladly reminded that there are writers out there that have a point, and a good one. Who address real issues in fiction that can transform minds without trying too hard.

To answer your question, I am so discouraged that I will be in that mediocre group, that I can't even begin. Stories with meaning are as rare as authors who an write them. I can't wait to get my hands on another...

[peet111]

I think we have the benefit of hindsight on a lot of historical works and it's much harder to be convinced by contemporary "post-modern" or whatever it's called now, because we're still in it, able to resent somebody's narrow take on life--- maybe minimalist Carver or scientific Barth--- because we don't see the world the same way. Along with that we can feel this writing has been sucked of the "story" for the sake of effect and therefore, we feel manipulated as opposed to immersed.

On a radio show I heard an interview with an Australian woman who had won the "425 character short story contest."
She read her story and I thought ok but why is this needed? Sure it was a game of sorts but really, that's too short!

A long time ago, I used to find the long-winded moderns discouraging but I didn't always finish their books so I got over it.

[Osito]

Yes. Next to J.K. Rowling I have on occasion felt inadequate, even though our subject matter is completely opposite. Mine is fiction, but more real-life rather than fantasy.

Reading He's Just Not That Into You made me feel better once. That book is a whole bunch of nothing as far as I'm concerned. I can't picture somebody buying that.

I generally don't like to knock on other people's work since for the most part I think authors' whole hearts go into their books, but sometimes...

I just tell myself that there's something out there for everyone and anything that I think is bad or uninteresting might be somebody else's total epiphany.

[Huckleberry3911948]

i bit when i was young but after losing 50 lbs being a starving artist i figured out i needed to keep my money and art separate. this has worked out pretty well. now that i am retired i do lots of art. but in that i am old and financially secure i am not freaking out about my artistic progress.

[Osito]

I wanted to add too that "word salad" as another poster cleverly calls it, is common in a lot of work, and though it doesn't really go with a story all the time and can be distracting from the point of the story if abused too much, it's part of human nature. What some people find insignificant might be significant to someone else, it's all relative.

[laina1980]

Believe me I have read some lemons out there, and I am pretty mainstream of a reader. I have actually returned a book to B & N for this reason. And I have always thought that " How did this get published?".

[I. B. Trippin]

Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801

when reading someone else's work that has been published and you find yourself thinking, "Now how the hell did THAT get published???"

Writers all deal with rejection, and we have to get used to it. But sometimes I read stories that did get published and wonder what the heck the editors ever saw in the story that made them say, "Yeah, let's pick THAT thing out of the pile and put it in our publication."

I just read a short story in a small literary magazine. Nothing happened in the story. It had no plot, the characters are all exactly the same, and the "secret" that the characters don't discuss but that is supposedly the glue holding them together was just sort of ho-hum. Nothing that evoked any sort of emotion in the reader.

I suspect sometimes that it's sort of an "Emperor's New Clothes" situation--there's nothing to see, so the people making the choices figure it must be THEM who aren't seeing the obvious brilliance that MUST be there.

Yes, I've had this experience a few times and it bothered me quite a bit. I'd been hoping that the sort of cronyism, nepotism, under-the-table deals, and just blatant corruption so prevalent in the worlds of business and politics were not so common in the arts, where I was hoping that achievement was a matter of merit. Of course, I can't prove that these substandard works were published because of corruption in the writing and/or publishing industries but it's shaken my faith in the arts.

One of these experiences has stayed in my mind, even after many years. I'd gotten an e-mail from a friend who said she saw a writer's manual advertised and the title made her think of me. The author was a well-known writer of 50 or 60 books, had frequently been featured on the bestsellers list and had received many awards from various associations representing his chosen genre' On a few occasions, I'd overheard people discussing some of his serial works, which had gained quite a little cult following. I had been meaning to read some of those serial titles, myself but somehow just never got around to it. Intrigued, I ordered the book but while waiting for it to arrive, I also went to the library and loaded up on a few of those serial titles.

I found his style to be very dry, though compelling, in its own way and there were some isolated facets of writing at which he excelled. For many years, I'd made a hobby of the study of the subject of this particular series and was disappointed to find that his treatment of it was technically and factually incorrect, which should have ruined the stories for me but somehow didn't. Upon, receiving the writer's manual, I was pleasantly surprised, as it was not only well-written and entertaining but I felt that it spoke to me. I also finished the series, which represented some of the author's later work and found that the latest of that series represented an exponential advancement in the author's ability or willingness to fully develop his characters, their interactions and storylines, as I witnessed them becoming multi-dimensional before my eyes.

Driven by curiosity, I decided to trace the evolution of his of writing by exploring some of his earlier serial works. I chose a series which I believe represented his early, though not earliest works. Again, I was struck by his lack of thorough knowledge of his subject but the writing, itself, was so horrible in every conceivable way, (plot, sentence construction, composition, punctuation, grammar, spelling, factual inconsistency in story details even on the same page, highly improbable events within the context of the story and characters, poorly developed and cliche' characters and a mechanically formulaic approach to the narrative), that I literally couldn't bring myself to even finish the first chapter.

This from an author who had begun writing seriously as a child, was first published as a teenager and was well into his career in his mid-twenties or early thirties when this particular series was published. I just couldn't wrap my mind around the idea that this book had been published, bad as it was! In fact, I even wrote a letter the head of a university creative writing department, seeking some sort of plausible explanation or insight.

I moved forward in the the author's evolutionary timeline and read the next series which I found to be dry in narrative and style, (though somewhat in keeping with his subject matter), as well as lacking in a realistic understanding of interactions between his characters but otherwise, greatly improved. Later, I stumbled onto what I believe to be one of the author's latest works and was pleasantly overwhelmed with the sheer scope of the story, his complete and nuanced understanding of his subject(s), his astute understanding and portrayal of his characters and their interactions and his masterful development and pacing of the storyline and plot. I consider this last book to be the pinnacle of his body of work in fiction novels and so, this story has a happy ending....but I still wake up sometimes in the middle of the night and wonder just how in the hell he got those early serial novels published.