It's time to face facts, whatever I'm doing, it's not working. So, after 40 years + of creative writing... where is square one? It's time for a change.
When it comes to fiction ( genres is irrelevant), it helps to be in the character's mind and see things from their perspective and what not. Think of it like creating an alter ego of sorts if you will. With a bit of time you might find that you can be that noble knight losing at chess to a dragon, or that hard-ass space marine trying to figure out how to use a wrench properly. Firstly you just have to step outside of you, and into a new pair of 'shoes', and see where they take you. I am sure you have that part inside you, you just have to nurture it a bit and let it do the 'walking'. Good luck and hope this helps a smidgen.
How do you define "not working?" What are your goals and what crucial bit of affirmation are you missing that tells you you're not meeting them?
In everything I've done in my life, I seem to have hit the 70th percentile, just once before I die I'd like to be the best. The way I'm going I won't get there. So, it's not working.
As someone with a significantly nihilistic bent towards the world, I'd say that no one ever achieves and objective 'best' title. Name anyone who you think is the 'best' writer, actor, or bassist, and it won't be hard to find someone with compelling evidence to dispute it. People who are fully realized as artists instead focus less on some arbitrary definition of 'best' foisted on us by pedants -- they stop working in Bad Faith, taking someone else word on how to be bad or good -- and start working Authentically. Accepting the flaws that aren't really flaws and finding a voice that speaks for them, because being the best us we can ever be is pretty much the only best we can ever hope to be, and it seems me that not being you can make that hard to do.
I see a gold medal that says "October" under your avatar. I'm excessively proud of my single lightning bolt, so keep up the good fight, but don't forget the medal.
Writing is difficult. Not for the faint of heart. Also you have to separate what you like to read from what you're good at writing. Sometimes they don't mesh. I find a lot of writers on a lot of sites writing some really clunky genre stories imitating movies or tv and they won't switch genre. They won't try anything easier or more in keeping with their knowledge or interests. And the ones that do keep their interests in mind they don't write better -- they write better stories. Sometimes we have to cross certain genres off our lists - romance is off my list and possibly true horror I find them personally too difficult to write. Shooting for the best is fine but you can't quit or get into the frame of mind that everything is subjective so why bother? That type of thinking won't produce good art or good writing. Nobody is going to hand you anything in this world you have to grab for it. Olympic medalists push and push and push for one performance. If you want to be the best writer, keep writing and keep challenging yourself on what you think about things. Don't reiterate what everyone else is saying.
I second this. I grew up on Harry Potter and historical paranormal romance novels, so of course it makes sense that the novel I'm writing is a sci-fi/fantasy without a drop of romantic main plot in it. /s Authors like Lynn Kurland and Tamora Pierce and all the romance novels my mom got me hooked on, and Sherrilyn Kenyon...I'd like nothing more than to write a romance novel that didn't suck. But the few times I've tried, I just can't get it to sound *authentic* unless I'm using someone else's characters. Characters, mind you, that I've already seen interact in a romantic fashion. I'm incapable of creating *good* romance...so I'm focusing on the things I am good at: sentence-crafting and raw emotion. I've got a finely-tuned sense of vocabulary, and it's 95% of what I've got going for me. Unfortunately, I can't write a romance to save my life, so I'm stuck writing something that wants to be more of an action novel. Figure out what you're good at. Everyone's got a talent, whether it's wordplay or intuition or the boundless power of spite. Even if what you're good at isn't what you wanted to do, there's a novel you can write with it. And maybe, someday, as you learn and hone the things you're good at, you'll figure out how to do the things you've always wanted to not suck at. Probably.
