The (writer's) struggle

“Teaching’s just something I do to pay the bills while I finish my novel.  I’ve been working on it for five years.”

“It must be very good.”

“It’s a piece of shit.”

And with that line, I think Donald Sutherland captured the essence of pretty much how all first-time/part-time novelists feel about their work.  I’m not a fan of anything I write and yet I continue to work at it.  Writers are a bit of a masochistic bunch.  We toil and torture ourselves for that perfect sentence, that perfect adjective, that perfect paragraph, that perfect “call me Ishmael” opening line.  And even after all of that, even after people tell us, “hey, that’s a pretty good story,” we’re still not convinced.  It could be so much more, so much better.  Which is why we never stop writing, never stop trying to achieve that literary perfection.

Now, that’s not to say that there aren't “writers” out there who must be stopped, writers with confidence where there shouldn't be any- especially now that self-publishing e-books has made it easier than ever before to give unpublished writers a chance to gain an audience.  Unfortunately, that means that everyone and their grandmother who has ever had a brilliant idea once in the 7th grade is now clogging up the bibliosphere with their nonsense.

But, shouldn't we be happy that people are actually writing things for others to read?  Technically, yes.  I do have a special place in my heart for people who promote reading as a viable leisurely activity (even if they’re only doing it because they’re absolutely convinced that they will become the next J.K. Rowling or Stephen King). 

Also, in a bit of a twist, I’m quite jealous of the confidence that some of those writers have, to just put out their product and throw caution to the wind and your opinion on their writing be damned!  But, alas, I am Donald Sutherland in “Animal House.”  Yes, I have been working on my piece of shit novel for almost 10 years but I will never stop.