posted
I am (yet again) on call today, and returning home I recognized that I had accomplished far more and did far more good in three house at the hospital than I did all week (or month) in my writing, even despite an output of ~30K.
While I re-read and continue to edit two stories this weekend, I need express how they simply seem...not to the professional standard I would hope after so many more hours I spent writing and editing them.
I won't call it an epiphany, for it is neither a new or sudden self-awareness nor will it alter my behavior or dissuade me (or save me) from, in Sisyphus-fashion, seeking to write stories "good enough to publish" but, I need admit, I am a far better (and more successful) physician than writer.
Yet...it does not suffice. So back to editing.
Respectfully, Dr. Bob
Posts: 1475 | Registered: Aug 2010
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posted
Doubt and indecision, hunches something's not quite working and something is missing in my writing have consumed my meditations these past several years. I found answers by studying writing topics and from closely reading narratives, focused writing, testing audience reception, and applying what I learned. I'm almost satisfied now, though the struggle continues.
One of the biggest advances in my writing came from realizing any scene ought to portray action, sensation, conversation, introspection, and emotion; and antagonism, causation, and tension; and how to accomplish same.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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posted
You did not become a competent physician except through many years of sweat and bull-headed perseverence. I know this for a fact, and I don't know anything about your background. Writing is like any other craft.
Posts: 884 | Registered: Feb 2012
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posted
I can never figure out what's wrong with what I'm written until months or years have passed, and also long after I've sent it out and had it rejected. Worse, I still like some of them a lot, even after I've seen what's wrong with them...but I can't think of how to correct it.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
This quote keeps me going sometimes. “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of sh**... I try to put the sh** in the wastebasket.” - Ernest Hemingway in a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Posts: 130 | Registered: Aug 2012
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posted
It is too early in the morning; I read the title of this thread as "the penis of perspicuity."
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Dec 2003
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I think it's because you can't measure the good a story will do for people if you don't get it in the hands of people. Many a bestselling book is imperfect. Many a bestselling does little more good than to entertain, but that is still a gift.
Get it done, and then get it to the people.
Posts: 1201 | Registered: Jan 2008
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posted
Writing is a lot like cooking. I doubt that anybody started an internationally famous restaurant without learning to fry eggs at home first. Then hamburgers maybe? Or pancakes. Or cook rice. Then maybe learn how to steam some kind of vegetable. Then how to squish a spud.
Write a story. Shove it out of the nest. Write another story. Shove it out of the nest. Keep writing and trying, get fancier as you go along.
Posts: 884 | Registered: Feb 2012
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