Breinthewild

Oh boy, so you wrote a thing! (Congrats by the way). Now, what to do with it?

(I’m asking this for myself by the way. Hell if I know.)

See, this is the part where I get stuck. I’ve got projects and stories and ideas bursting out of me at all times but when it comes to actually sharing them with people, well that’s something else entirely isn’t it?

Something done is no guarantee of something good, or even something tolerable. I keep stuttering to a stop, mired in questions. Is this useful? Is it reasonable? Is it bad? Good? Harmful? Freeing? What am I going for? Are my intentions clear? Does it matter?

These questions masquerade as a critical eye. They help you improve, right? They’re a fortress wall against imaginary critics and disappointment, right? They’re necessary…right?

Perhaps in some capacity they are valuable. I’m a believer in feedback, especially from people who know you well and care about you (this isn’t just for writing either). But that feedback has to be constructive. It has to build something, not just take a wrecking ball to the pillars of your life and laugh as it all comes tumbling down. And my personal feedback to myself tends to err more on the demolition side of things.

One of my good friends helped me figure this out, though unintentionally. They introduced (or rather re-introduced) me to a show I hadn’t watched in years, one I bailed on after a few seasons when the plot twists became unbearably stupid and the writing painfully hokey. My friend told me to skip the hokey seasons and head straight for the good stuff later on. So I did.

The plot still didn’t make much sense. The writing ranged from genius to jaw-droppingly terrible (often in the same episode). The same set got reused every 5 scenes with slightly different furniture placement. I cannot in good conscience refer to any part of it as ‘good.’

Yet I loved it.

I cheered, I laughed, I gasped aloud at all the right parts. I remembered everything I enjoyed about the show to begin with–and all the things that frustrated me. I realized if the show had been gunning for perfect, or even ‘good’ it probably never would have been made.

I also realized I love a lot of things like that. Imperfect, human things.

Kind of like what I write.

There’s a good chance I roll up to this next part of the process of trying to get my work out into the wild with a flaming pile of word garbage I’ve mistaken for a novel. Do I hope that’s not the case? Absolutely. Is there a guaranteed way to ensure that’s not the case? No, but that lack of a guarantee is no longer enough to keep me from the great try.

The heart of those critical, miring questions from the beginning is fear. Of not being enough. Of being judged and falling well short. Of being misunderstood, having intentions attributed that never existed, of being mistaken.

Of being bad.

Those things will happen anyway. They cannot be avoided, only minimized in a way that minimizes yourself. The cost to avoid this is to not try and I think I’m finally at the point where that’s too high.

So, attempts will be made, yadda yadda, so on and so forth. I guess we’ll see on the other side whether or not any of this is worth it. See ya then?