“Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and ‘fall into a vortex’, as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace… She did not think herself a genius by any means, but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh… The divine afflatus usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her ‘vortex’, hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent.”
Sooner or later, every writer comes face to face and does battle with the vicious monster known as perfectionism. Now, I know that you’re probably shaking your head at your messy apartment, your half-finished novel, and your stained coffee mug, thinking, “I’m anything but perfect.” Read on, my friend. Read on.
When I think of perfect, I think of a beautiful Hollywood actress or that kid we all hated in school that seemed to be in every single club photo. I absolutely don’t think of my writing, or what there actually is of it. Every New Year, tons of writers swear to anyone who is listening that they will Write More and Write Better, but our own desire to write amazing works can be what hampers our progress.
Let’s face it, not many people love to write. What we love is having written. When you look back at the beautifully typed, flawless sheet of prose that sprung out of the depths of your mind, you feel awesome. You don’t think about how it felt to stare at that blank screen, utterly convinced that everything you want to write about is boring or unoriginal. You just can’t believe what a bubbling well of genius you are, you sexy writer you.
Learning how to edit your own work is crucial for a writer.
When it comes to my own writing, I crush easy. I fall in love with sentences, placing them on pedestals like God himself penned them rather than little ol’ me. I feel like they’re etched in stone, like I can’t hit backspace a few times and make them disappear. It’s a problem a lot of beginning writers have. In a perfect world, we’d have editors to send our stuff to and kick back while they go nuts with red ink and spit it back spick and span. But this ain’t a perfect world, and we’re not nearly successful enough to afford those dudes, so the next best option is ourselves. Being a good self-editor is important for a young writer. It allows us to screen our writing and weed out a good chunk of the faultiness in it. I’m no expert, but in the last year I’ve improved my editing abilities a lot with a few steps I’ve learned through experimentation and experience. Read more »
When you're thinking about how to make it as a writer, think about hip-hop
I’ve been a hip-hop head for a lot longer than I’ve been a writer, ever since Mom let me buy Jay-Z’s Dynasty album back in 2000. Hip-hop gets a bad rap sometimes, but I love it. It’s raw, it’s passionate and believe it or not, it teaches me fundamental lessons I apply to writing.
The first lesson is having confidence in my artistry and myself.
Hip-hop is all about self-promotion. In every track, an artist is telling you how great his lyrics are, how fly he is, how tough he is, how intelligent he is, and so on. Some people see that as egocentric. I see that as having confidence, or as its commonly referred to in hip-hop circles –- swag. In the hip-hop world, swag is the way you dress, walk and talk. In the literary world, I’d liken it to the confidence you have in your writing and yourself as a writer. Read more »
My name is Andrew Boryga, and this post is the beginning of a bi-weekly column I’ll be writing entitled “From One Young Writer to Another.” The purpose of my column is to give a different perspective on the literary world. Through my own experiences as a young writer I want to provide some advice for people my age, or at the least, examples of what not to do.
I am a freshman English major at Cornell University. I first became interested in literature in middle school, and since my sophomore year of high school, the only thing I’ve ever wanted to be is a writer. The majority of my writing thus far has been journalistic. I have been writing fiction for less than a year. In most cases my inexperience would be a limiting factor, but on this site it’s a gift.
So if there is any writing issue you’d like to see tackled from a young person’s perspective, whether or not you’re a young writer yourself, let me know by emailing me at andrew@litdrift.com.
I began my first real short story in November. Billy was my first protagonist.
He lived in a small Midwestern town and worked a gas station. He was a sophomore at a decent college but didn’t like it much. He wanted out of his life.
A man pulled into his station one day driving a car covered in bumper stickers, offering Billy the ride of a lifetime. “Come watch the lines on the road with me,” said the ragged old man.
This whole story had been mapped out: the plot –– everything. But after four pages, I had nothing to say. Billy was still in school, getting ready to leave with the traveler and I was preparing to write crazy adventures for the two of them –– crazy adventures I’ve never experienced myself. I’ve never hitchhiked, never bought anything but roundtrip bus tickets and I’ve always known when I was coming home. And so Billy’s story remained four pages long.
During winter break in December, I went home. I enjoyed the food and my old friends. I reminisced. I pulled out my box of old middle school photos. I thought about all the stupid things my friends and I used to do. I thought about my old principal who’d only give late passes to the pretty girls and I thought about the bus driver on the BX 55 who’d yell and holler every time I went through the back entrance.
Then it hit me.
“What the hell am I doing writing about a kid from the Midwest?” I asked myself. I’ve lived in the Bronx for 19 years –– I don’t know jack shit about the Midwest. Read more »
On my computer there is a folder labeled “Short Stories”. In that folder lie 20 or so opening paragraphs to short story ideas I’ve had the last few months. They range from a delusional bus ride, a sleep-running businessman and my dog’s neurotic nature when he can’t find his toys. The one thing they have in common is that they’re all unfinished.
Think of the process to becoming a writer like the process of building a brick wall.
I’ve always been one to shoot for the moon and be really pissed off if I land amongst stars. It’s a problem I think most young writers and artists in general go through, setting lofty goals for ourselves and getting angry when they aren’t met.
My problem is that I want to be published in the New Yorker right now. Read more »
Just one of many negative perspectives of the Twilight saga.
An ambitious sophomore in high school three years ago, I checked out Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. Striving to seem mature and sophisticated, I lugged the book around for over a month. It was the hardest read of my entire life. The worst part is I had no clue as to its significance. Grasping the bare bones of the plot, I knew there was more the novel wanted to communicate.
Sure, one reason I didn’t catch the significance was because I was a sophomore in high school. In my first year of college though, I’ve discovered I’m not the only person confused. There are whole courses devoted to Dostoyevsky and The Brothers Karamazov; the underlying significances, symbols, motifs and so on.
Maybe I should’ve stuck to Harry Potter like the rest of my classmates.
In my short time, it seems the literary world places most value on novels with human messages, even more so on novels taking long intricate routes to get to those messages. However, it seems the literary world also tends to cast novels not adhering to such standards as a “literature of diversion” as Jonathan Franzen puts it.
At school, literary high brows’ nostrils flare at the sight of a Twilight or Harry Potter novel. “That’s not real literature,” they say. I’m not a fan of genre novels myself, but I think my fellow undergrads and the literary community are wrong for totally writing off such novels. Read more »
The good news is that John Irving doesn’t believe that the book is dead. On the other hand, in a recent interview for “Big Think”, he says that if he were a 27-year-old novelist trying to get his first book published today, he’d be tempted to shoot himself.
I think my favorite response to this interview so far is from the Fiction Circus’ Miracle Jones, who says:
“As a 27-year-old writer trying to get his first novel published, I’d much rather kill John Irving.”
Instead of my typical point-by-point rebuttal, I thought this time I’d respond to Irving’s sentiments with a list of contemporary writers under 27 (or who have recently been 27) who have been doing just fine. Read more »
