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...I'm at the point where nothing seems right. Everything I write down is cliche, badly written, and has bad pacing. Yet when I was younger I would turn out stories one right after the other like a non-stop machine. But now...thanks to all those instructors and classes, the creative edge is now limping along like a dog with only one leg.
...I don't have an agent or anything published in the first place. So that does paint an extra layer of doubt upon the situation.
...when I discuss this, usually I'm berated with people saying, "Stop being so emo." As if depression were something that one can simply switch on and off.
...I guess what I'm doing here is ... trying to find some kind of sign, revelation or clue that I'm not a bad writer or that I'm just another writing loser.
You're not a bad writer or a loser of any kind.
-- You're NORMAL.
...I don't have an agent or anything published in the first place. So that does paint an extra layer of doubt upon the situation.
...when I discuss this, usually I'm berated with people saying, "Stop being so emo." As if depression were something that one can simply switch on and off.
...I guess what I'm doing here is ... trying to find some kind of sign, revelation or clue that I'm not a bad writer or that I'm just another writing loser.
You're not a bad writer or a loser of any kind.
-- You're NORMAL.
The truth is all artists of every kind have to deal with Doubt -- from the rank beginner to the professional. All of us, without exception.
The dividing line between an artist and a loser is actually simple -- sheer, mule-headed, Stubborness. Losers give up. Artists won't.
Those of us writers (and artists) that actualy make it to publication are monumentally stubborn. We write / create in spite of being less than perfect, in spite of being depressed, or angry, or tired, or blind, or crippled...
The best of us, like Niel Gaimen, (and Stephen King, and Nora Roberts...) USE that doubt and stubborness to improve our skills by refusing to settle for 'good enough'. We dig up every trick we can find and scribble our discoveries into notebooks, on notepads, (or into writing tips,) and Practice them in little stories (or fan-fiction) until we can actually make use of them.
NO ONE is perfect, but that doesn't mean we can't tell a good story -- that we're not Artists.
Be stubborn. Seriously. It will carry you far further than anything else will -- even skill.
Ookami
