DISAPPOINTED WRITER? AREN’T THEY ALL

The disappointed writer hides their feelings in their work.

If it’s not their subject, it’s their characters; if it’s not the setting, it’s the theme.

The disappointed writer always falls back to their comfort zone.

Instead of man vs nature, or man vs society, it’s one whiney writer vs themselves.

It starts with a yearning, a strong feeling you can’t ignore, along with a bathtub of gin.

Is it a mountain they see and want to climb? Because ‘it’s there?’

A glass ceiling over the dreams they chase, and they’re on the wrong side?

Once you believe you’ve got something to say to an audience wider than the people you know, you’re going to be disappointed.

Chances are the people you know are disappointed too, but they don’t tell you.

Why the disappointment?

Because you won’t get a chance to invite that audience to spend time with your work.

But that’s not the big disappointment.

That comes when you read other’s work and you know you’re better.

Except, they got the breaks and you didn’t.

Who gets that coat of blame?

Show Your Disappointment, Don’t Tell

One of my big disappointments is Thomas Wolfe.

I saw his house, visited his museum, bought his books.

Does anyone read Thomas Wolfe, or do you mistake him for Tom Wolfe?

A biographer remarked on the thesis: “Reading it, one sees what has been the most baleful influence of graduate education on many who have suffered through it: It deadens all sense of style.

That was someone’s remarks on Tom Wolfe’s graduate work.

I felt the same way reading Thomas Wolfe and blamed myself for not having the mental tools to understand the older Wolfe’s work.

Do I blame myself that Thomas Wolfe isn’t mentioned in the same breath as Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Steinbeck, or Faulkner?

No, do you?

I’m disappointed he’s not a better writer with his Ivy League graduate degree. I blame a deadened sense of style.

My Portland State University history degree finally pays off by ragging on Wolfe.

You suck, Thomas. Go home. Again.

George Webber (Wolfe) has written a successful novel about his family and hometown. When he returns to that town, he is shaken by the force of outrage and hatred that greets him.

Family and lifelong friends feel naked and exposed by what they have seen in his books, and their fury drives him from his home.

Outcast, George Webber begins a search for his own identity. It takes him to New York and a hectic social whirl; to Paris with an uninhibited group of expatriates; to Berlin, lying cold and sinister under Hitler’s shadow.

The journey comes full circle when Webber returns to America and rediscovers it with love, sorrow, and hope.

This book was ‘extracted’ from a larger work, like a natural resource, after he died young.

Plotting A Disappointing Future

Whether you’re a writer sitting in a folding chair at a card table inside a chilly trailer in a swamped mobile home park, or tucked into an cozy office in an ivory tower, it’s the same plot:

Things are not what they seem.

Like Thomas Wolfe’s George Webber, you can leave a disappointing place, like your trailer park, and come back to find it not as bad as you last thought.

But how does someone reject the luxury and comfort of their tower high on hill?

Reluctantly.

Can the same motivators force a move from either place?

One wants to be anyplace but their trailer; so does the other, but has no idea why since they’ve never lived in a trailer.

Things are not what they seem?

The trailer park is a community of loving, caring, neighbors; the tower remote and distant.

These two writers meet at a writer’s group and discuss their WIP.

“This is so easy. Everything is falling into place. I’ve got a book deal and a movie option. Ben Affleck is interested.”

“That’s great to hear. My agent is negotiating an audio book, ebook, and foreign rights, and an animated feature film. I couldn’t be happier. George Clooney said he wants to do the voice work.”

Disappointed Writer Stays Upbeat

You don’t need a complete meltdown to stop writing.

Whether it’s a return to shooting heroin and nodding, releasing your drunk alter-ego on the 12 Step dance floor, or fleeing deeper into your hermit lair, writing stuff can still be a part of life.

Call it a calling, and you know what happens with a calling? You answer.

At some point in every major writing project I’ve ever worked on, I’ve wanted to give up. I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve felt so exhausted, so stupid, so humiliated that I wanted to quit being a writer and give up my dream altogether.

Steven Pressfield calls this the Resistance, a malicious, sentient force actively seeking the destruction of your creative thinking and  art. I call it the ugly middle. Whatever you want to call it, the truth is that when you reach this point, you’re close to a breakthrough.

The best thing you can do is push through it.

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My major work is a huge memoir that’s been professionally edited. Three passes with notes.

What have I learned? Editors won’t write your book.

Their notes create more work with all of the ‘unpacking’ and ‘circling back’ and ‘continuity.’

What have I learned? Writing is therapy, not that I’m a writing therapist.

A regular time and place, which translates to a writing habit, is a good place to start if you get lost.

My writing habit starts with this blog at five in the morning. One post with all of the trimmings and I’m done.

Titles, headings, images, key words, internal links, external links, sentence length, word choice, all under 1000 words. Ideally 750, the length of a newspaper column.

Then I’m a disappointed writer when every post doesn’t go viral. Since no post has, it’s a workable disappointment.

What comes next? Planning the next installment of an ongoing process.

That’s your plan, too, writer. If not, make it your plan.