Maybe it’s not that people are reading my mind, maybe it’s just simply the principle of observance that states: You’ll notice the things you’re already thinking about. Like when you learn a new word you’ve never seen before, and then it suddenly seems as though every book you read contains that word.
I’ve recently been starting to think of my writing time as an apprenticeship. Yes, I hope I sell each short story I write, and yes, it’s crushing to let go of a novel I’ve spent three years on, but that’s just the way of apprenticeship. Your first attempts simply aren’t that good, but slogging through them is the best way to learn.
Since I’ve started looking at things that way, I’ve heard this advice echoed by other writers. Just this week I’ve begun working on novel number four, though I’ve been debating over whether that’s a better choice than continuing to rewrite novel number three into a bloody pulp. If I think of myself as an apprentice, however, the choice is simple: Write hard, write often, and practice by producing new work.
Jay Lake made a comment this week on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat that really hit home for me. (You can find the transcript here):
And write new stuff. Don’t spend years laboring over your Great Work. Trust me, it’s not that great. Go write another one. #sffwrtcht
Right? OK, then.
And this morning I came across this post at Writer Unboxed about not giving up if you hate your writing.
The first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambitions, but it’s not that good. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer. Your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. You can tell that it’s still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase.
This is what it means to be an apprentice. To look at the master’s work and think, It’s so marvelous, so effortless. How will I ever be able to compare to that!
And then you sit back down at the computer and do it again. And again. And again.
(Update: I realize now that a lot of the advice on pushing through your “bad work” years is echoed in (sources from?) a series of videos that Ira Glass did on storytelling a while back. I first saw them here. Good stuff, check it out.)

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