Octavia took care of it for you...

"You don't start out writing good stuff.

You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff,

and then gradually you get better at it.

That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence."

Octavia Butler

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I read it quickly and at first it meant revision to me, maybe it does. I reread it slower and realized it was a response to my previous blog entry. Oh, the timing--it's bizzarre.

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I still have this feeling there's something in my project. And I am nurturing that feeling. Otherwise, why am I even here? Sitting alone in a room with the gnashing of teeth and the pulling of hair. and the blood and sweat and tears.

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I won't truly know whether it's crap until I set it loose on my first reader.

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I know it sounds like I missed the point. She's saying that even though my book is crap, I should persist so I can get better. Still, if what I am writing right now IS actually crap then I feel so lost. Can my inner reader be so wrong?

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"You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff"

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She's one of my heroes. Her novels are filled with plot and character development. Currently my WIP is filled with plot... char dev I was going to enlarge upon in 2nd draft. I hope so much that I can edit it to a publishable story.

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What if I'm not a writer? It's how I comfort myself that I don't fit in at work or with people in general, that I have gotten nowhere in my job. I'm just not doing what I was meant to do. But if writing's not it, what is left other than a gaping hole? It's why I cling so tenaciously. Sometimes I don't think I'll ever finish this thing. Sometimes I can't believe I'm almost there. And always there is this hope that when I reach the other side, I will be validated. I found My Calling. The answer to the question, "What do you want to do with your life?" And I can regret I hadn't taken the calling seriously earlier in life.

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Although it does seem like what I'm writing now, I could not have written before. They were interesting starts but I thought it would jinx the story. I never thought the story through, or constructed a scene or built a world and culture. I just wrote the idea until it ran out of steam. I'm hoping that writing with the Inner Reader in mind at every scene is the difference. I hope I've found my personal magic key.

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There are so many new writers like me, all looking for that thing that allows us to do this full time. So many mid-list authors who keep hoping the next one is the one that takes off. And everyone wondering why their book, their baby isn't the one that made it, that caught people's attention enough that they were willing to get in a bidding war over it. That readers were lining up around the block to get their hands on your baby so they could share in the world that you spent all that time living in, all those years of hard work.

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I guess other writers survive rejection, over and over and over and over.

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Only time will teach me that I can too.