Okay - first off, there are tons of people who aren't in it to publish. There's a lady at my writing group who writes prolific, brilliant novels, and has no intention of selling them to the point where it frustrates me - but she spends time on doing it anyway and that's fine (for what it's worth she's also doing really well with her career, so I'm not going to say she's wasting time). Second - a lot of us struggle with the "is this worth spending time on?" thing. Or variations like "does this count as work?" or "does this count as activity?" or "is it worth it if what I'm working on now isn't publishable?" For what it's worth - the answer to that question usually has to be "Who cares? I love doing this, so I'm going to keep doing it anyway." You kind of have to get to the point of being so mad at your "internal heckler" that you finally tell that voice in your head to F off and leave you alone. Third - I guarantee you that your stuff is not as bad as you think it is. And I'm not saying it's good or bad, I'm just saying that we are all our own worst critics. So before you judge it, you better have some people who know writing look at it and tell you what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong. Self-judging is crap - especially if you're a beginner. If you don't think you're qualified to write good stuff, how the heck are you qualified to JUDGE whether or not your stuff is good? This also goes for family members or close friends - especially those who are skeptical of your writing hobby. It should go without saying that if someone doesn't think writing is an acceptable use of your time, that is not the person you should be asking whether or not it's good (I had to learn that one the hard way). You also don't want people who don't know the nuts and bolts of writing telling you whether you're doing it right, because they actually don't know. Find writers, ask them. If they're any good as a critique group, they'll be supportive even if your writing is garbage - because they've all probably had to deal with the same stuff. Also, even if your stuff IS garbage, they'll know WHY it's garbage, how far said garbage has decomposed, and how to fix it. Fourth - if you want to learn the craft of writing itself - the first thing you need to do is give yourself permission to write garbage. You'll note that we call writing a "craft" more than we call it an "art" (actors do that as well). A big reason for that is that a "craft" implies skill and practice. You don't develop skill with language unless you practice. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING is perfect on the first try - in any craft, at any level - you can't expect it to be. I don't know whether the old saw that the first book is always bad is true or not. I certainly hope not, seeing as I'm finishing my first and hoping to pitch the darn thing (sorry, I'm one of those "I write to publish" people...). But even if you're looking to publish - writing fiction isn't exactly a slam-dunk career choice. If you write, you better be writing because you love it and can't stop. So - shorter answer - if you want to write, keep writing, no matter what. It's one of those things you only do if you have a crazy, unexplainable passion for it. Passion is it's own justification.
I agree with one, two, and four, but three? I think there are a significant number of beginners who think their work is way BETTER than I think it is. I'd agree with it if it were just - as a beginner, it's really hard for you to judge how good your work is. (And, BTW - I could totally stop writing. If I stopped getting paid, I'm pretty sure I'd stop writing. It takes a lot of time, and there are so many other, easier things to do...)
My view is that if you're writing this, there's a reason. The reason might be about the final product, or it may be about a need to express yourself, or it may be about the need to think about some ideas in a form that the writing serves. It might even be about challenging your own need to always be above average. I'd recommend that you keep going.
If I'm understanding you the way I read it originally, then you sound like you don't particularly have the desire to "get better." You have more of a desire to finish your particular story and feel that maybe it's a waste of time because you don't particularly want to get better. Am I close? If so, then I would hark directly back to BV's initial comment. If it's something you enjoy and feel positive, I think that's more important than being concerned about "wasted time." Basically, what's the bigger priority for you? Doing something your enjoy, or wasting time? To me, and obviously reasonably, I don't feel anything I enjoy doing a waste of time whether I'm good at it or not. I like RPG games and if that's not a waste of time, I don't know what is, but I enjoy the hell out of it. Doing something that makes me feel good is a much higher priority than considering it a waste of time (again, that "reasonably" thing). Is it unreasonable for you to spend time writing even if you desire to go no further than your one story?
Ha! Yes I have met this beginners too!! The ones who think they've written the untouchable great American novel which is perfect in its first draft form and which any revision would damage it's pristine greatness. Oh yes, I've met those. And okay - yeah - caveat - if you're not getting paid then you should be doing it because you love it and can't stop. Once you're getting paid well..yeah you lucky ducks get to change your calculus
No, I'd like to get better. For example, coming from a technical background, I had no idea adverbs were "bad". So I've really (see!) worked on paring those down in my story, which is doubly (ha!) tough because I see them all the time in books I read. Maybe I read trash, I don't know. Now that I have the awareness of adverbs, if not the complete desire to remove them all, I'm working on exposition. I'm terrified of telling, not showing, so there are maybe two paragraphs of exposition in the whole 30K words. Lots of dialog, lots of action, but the backstory has been tough for me to write. I'm trying to learn how to add it in appropriately. So there's desire to become better, just....not a brilliant, published author.
Make sure you take those sorts of bans with a grain/shaker of salt. There's nothing wrong with adverbs, just like there's nothing wrong with telling. They're both valuable tools for your toolbox. The issue comes when the tools are used too often...
Yeah, not all adverbs are as horrifically bad as some people would have you believe (see what I did there?) And sometimes telling works. Writing laws are like the Pirate's Code, they're more like guidelines than actual rules.
I have a radio-controlled "drone" (Walkera Ladybird, to be precise). I've had it for someting like three years now, and I still don't know how to fly it in a circle. I mean, I know the theory, I've read the tutorials and watched the youtube videos, but somehow I just can't get it to turn for me. That doesn't mean that I don't have a lot of fun bombing it around the sky forward, backwards, left, and right. As a pilot, I suck, but I'm still having fun. The only people who see me are the old dudes playing croquet in the park, and they don't know a thing about it, so they think it's pretty cool too. Point is, if you're enjoying doing it, it doesn't matter how good you are. Your friends and family (or the old dudes in the park) will enjoy reading it, and they'll tell you a couple nice things when they do. If you start to feel like you Might Have Something Good, feel free to show it to an unbiased audience here who will tell you, politely, whether or not they think you do, and what you can do to move it along the way. Or, as Robert Heinlein said, "Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, just do it in private, and wash your hands afterwards."
Anything you are new at you will be below average. It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at anything. Unless you've spent 10,000 hours, you won't be an expert. Unless you've spent 6,000 hours, you aren't even above average. Unless you've spent 5,000, you aren't even average. You cannot realistically expect to magically get better at something just because you tried it. Fortunately for writers, 10,000 hours is not required to make a good book. What you lack in hours you can compensate for in re-writes, and those in turn become more hours towards you becoming an expert. So rejoice, because being terrible at writing is irrelevant. Work beats talent. As well, wouldn't you rather start off terrible and continuously get better instead of starting great and slowly becoming terrible? If writing is a positive element in your life, continue. If it isn't, then cease. But at least attempt to follow-through with what you have begun. You don't have to finish the whole thing, but why not at least push through for 90 days until you can complete your first draft? Then you can judge how you feel about things. Or just write a few short stories and see how you feel. But starting and then quitting is a terrible habit to get into. If you follow that path, you will likely find yourself starting many projects and quitting them when you realize you aren't great at them, and you will never finish anything and you will never become great at anything. So just finish the first step, then look back on the path you walked and see if it was worth it. If you don't get to the end of the path, you have nothing to look back too.
As a pilot, I certainly hope the 10,000 hour part isn't true! (As a passenger, you probably do too) That helps with my question about raw skill, though. I figure I can take most anything first draft wise and do something with it, even if it's only correcting typos and spelling mistakes. But since I don't want to edit until I finish the first draft, those paragraphs that make me cringe are still out there...and I cringe when I think of them.
Just because you read a lot of books that don't follow the writing "rules" doesn't mean you read trash. It's really hard for me to find a book that's well-written according to modern standards (that I'm interested in). So far, I've only found ONE book like that--and according to a few reviews I've read, it's not even the author's best work. To me, it was wonderfully well-written, and I'm going to use it to help me see what great writing looks like (I'm not interested in her other books). As for the other books I read, I use them to see what I don't want to do in a book, aka, what drives me crazy. I'm learning to understand why the writing rules are what they are and what rules do I want to follow and when. If you do a lot of research, especially on this forum, you'll notice that a lot of great authors (y'all are great authors, y'know) disagree on most of the rules. The only thing they all (seem to) agree on? The rules should be known and understood by all authors so that when an author decides to ignore a rule, they can do it without ruining their book. When I first started researching how to write, I became overwhelmed by the writing rules. Every time I learned a new one, I'd go back to my earlier work and rewrite it . . . and rewrite it, and rewrite it, until I exhausted myself and hated myself enough to give up for a while. Gradually, with much help from the fantastic people on this forum, I've learned the difference between writing rules and writing guidelines. The writing rules are the ones you make for yourself. The writing guidelines are what everyone else says you should do. It can be difficult to know the difference between them, but you'll get better with time and practice. Good luck, and have fun!
I started where you did 20 years ago... even earlier if you count the books I started but never finished (but may yet). Have an BS & MS in Aero engineering, flew EC-130s and E-4s (4500 hours as Naval Flight Officer), working now as communications system engineer. Never took a creative writing class in my life. Sounds kind of like how you describe yourself. I learned a lot about writing along the way with this WIP, and you will too. Nothing to be terrified of... after all, no one is going to shoot you if you use an adverb, so why worry? And sometimes for first drafts, exposition is important for you the writer, though none but your beta readers may ever see it. Many of my chapters began with an exposition, like from a distant shot, of where they were and what was around them, then zooming in for more detail, all narrative. After writing that, I had a clear picture of where they were, what they might see/hear/smell, and the dialogue and action flowed from that. A particular chapter drove my wife/editor crazy, my description of what I thought a 1st century caravansary might look like; octagonal two story building around central court yard, big gates on each side, storerooms on the inner wall, how baggage was unloaded and put in different store rooms color-coded by destination. Eateries, taverns and bath houses, places for locals to set up merchant stalls. Inn on the second floor, about 50 single rooms. On and on for two or three pages. How a caravan of 500 animals carrying 125T might be quickly unloaded, valuable merchandise given secure, orderly stowage, and the animals and drivers serviced and rested after a week or more on the road. All done by people that couldn't read or write. But at the end of that, I had a perfect picture in my mind of that caravansary, and as my party came in to move around, I knew exactly what they would see and so forth, where they would go. I call that "scaffolding" and that is exactly what it is. Something to support my story. When I went back on first edit (after finishing the whole thing), that two or three pages had done its job, and like all scaffolding, most had to be removed. What remained was what they saw or understood (Romans, they had never seen a Central Asian caravansary before) and it became one sentence expositions, or dialogue, thinking the baths look good, and we can wait for wine next door till one opens up for us. And how about some goat and nan, smells good and I am hungry. That three pages became about two paragraphs, the action of the arriving caravan showed it in operation, so a description of how it worked was no longer needed. Did they work like this? Very little could I find on how caravansaries were set up. This set up was credible and fit the time, and a modern truck stop looks like a direct descendant, doing the same thing thousands of years removed. Fantasy writers sometimes call this world-building, and it serves the same purpose, though in my cases, I just dealt with a particular part of the world I had to fix in my mind. So don't be afraid of exposition in the first draft.
I'm to the point now where I don't even know how to write it without it looking funny. Of course, that might just be because my world building is shaky, I don't know. But it's something hard to research online because most of the information I can find is on how to avoid infodumps. Oh, well...something to research! And yes, our backgrounds are similar, although I've never had a job nearly as cool as an NFO.
It's about a young woman who's forced to give up the dream she's been chasing since she was a young girl...then finds out that her future has something more important in store. I'm cringing just writing that. It started as a theme more than anything else...sacrifice and duty. I was bitterly resentful about some things when I started writing it, although she is definitely NOT me in any way.
No need to cringe, sounds like a good story. Mine started out 20 years ago when I learned the Romans had a presence in the court in China in 166AD, and had gotten there by sea. I thought "wow, what an interesting trip the very first mission would have been around 100AD." And I was off. An officer Gaius Lucullus, sort of a command selected Lt Col in modern terms, legatus sine legio in theirs, his centurion Antonius Aristides, primus pilus (first lance) of the Legio XII Fulminata (12th Lightning Bolt) based in Syria, Gaius' cousin Senator Aulus Aemilius Galba, who is the ambassador who picked him (Gaius picked Antonius, none too happy to be going), Marcia Lucia, Chinese name Si Huar, Chinese girl of Roman descent and her brother Marcus (Si Nuo), translators from Liqian in Gansu, and a pirate and a duplicitous shipping master. My theme winds up being sacrificial love, giving the most precious thing you have for another, which they, and the other characters who wander in over the course of their adventure, all do for one another in this eclectic little family of sorts that bond over their three year, 17,000 mile trek across three continents. 240K words, 5 revisions and now looking for an agent. And all the same frustration you feel, which I think set in around 30K words for me also... "this is turning out to be too long (true), I don't know anything about writing, and even less about China!" Been there, done that, set it aside for 13 years. Picked it up three years ago when they were still in the S. China Sea and finished it last October.
240K words, holy cow! But what an interesting story...I'm not a history person, so I had no idea the Romans had a presence in the Far East. I'd read it, not only because I love the theme of sacrificial love. I think what makes me cringe is the backdrop of mine is soft science fiction...fantasy, really. I feel that by writing in that genre, I'm playing into the stereotype that women can't write hard science fiction, but the truth is is that this engineer hates reading hard science fiction. Writing it would be even less fun.
I remember a competition hang glider pilot saying that it takes about a hundred fifty hours to master the mechanics of flight ... how to take off, land, turn, and all that. But it takes another few hundred to a thousand hours to develop the judgement skills ... when to take off, when to turn, when to land. Having had about a thousand hours in hang gliders, I think that's about right. The question is: do you enjoy (or at least not hate) the process of writing ... making all the words fit into an attractive pattern that pleases you? (Some author once said that she hated to write, but she loved to have written.) If so, keep writing. If not, try another hobby. Life is too short to do what you don't have to do and don't like to do. Your value as a person really has nothing to do with what you're good at, only what you good parts of yourself you share with the world.
Not sure I know the difference between hard and soft science fiction! Well, I have some non-fiction books on Rome and the Distant East and was amazed at their presence in the Indian Ocean. As far down the "Far Side" (Africa to Tanzania opposite Madagascar), east to Indian, and beyond, even as far as Borneo. In ships up to 200 feet and 1000T. Though it didn't appear these were common trips, they were aware of "naked cannibals" in Borneo. And through Malacca to China. I found the 166AD mission almost duplicated mine, both docking at Rinan (Hanoi), but my fictional one coasted along China to Tianjin at the mouth of the Yellow RIver, then river boat to Luoyang 350 miles inland. The real one traveled overland from Rinan. The Indian Ocean contributed a hefty sum to the Roman treasury, as its half-billion dollar per year imports were taxed at 25% (ten times the inter-provincial "sales tax" rate) or $125M, enough to fund ten of the 36 legions. The research was fascinating. The world of the age was far more globalized than we realize today, but the Antonine Plague (small pox?) in 166AD pretty much put an end to that for 2000 years. One of the consequences of global trade is global pandemic.
"Hard" SF is where the science works out, or is at least in the realm of the reasonably plausible. It also tends to have a heavier focus on the tech side of things. Andy Weir's The Martian is a textbook example. "Soft" SF has lots of tech with exact functioning that is handwaved away and just serves as backdrop to the personal and cultural stories. Star Trek's transporters and warp drive are prime examples, as is Iain Banks' "Culture" series of novels. If the science is "soft enough, there is an argument to be made that a story may cross into fantasy, with Star Wars as a prime example. It's not an argument I'm interested in getting into, btw.
Don't not argue on my account. The few friends I've showed this to have all said "You said this is fantasy, but it's set in space. It's sci fi." Poor dears.
Nah, I just don't care that much. Go to the theater, buy my ticket, be entertained for a couple of hours, and head back home. Not really interested in going much deeper.
Thank you for making this distinction, I always knew this was a thing but I never knew what it was called.
