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Blogs by Joel Arnold
The Sucking Suckathon of Suckiness
5/21/2012 12:13:02 PM
Self-doubts among writers is a fairly common thing.
Whenever I sit down to write something, I'm always overwhelmed by doubts. Will this be any good? Has my best stuff already been written? Will I even remember how to write? Do these jeans make me look fat?
And then, as I work on the first draft, the doubts stay with me. This sucks. When are people going to realize I'm a hack? Have I lost my mojo? Look at all of this drivel - it'll take actual power tools to mold this prose shit-storm into some kind of shape resembling a story. And no, it's not the jeans, it's the shirt. This shirt makes me look fat.
I'll go through a 2nd, 3rd and 4th draft, and maybe finally the story starts turning into something decent, and I'll send it to some markets, or put it out on my own, and then wonder, wonder, wonder is it really any good? I shouldn't have put it out there. People will realize I'm a fraud. And why bother? Even if it is any good, it will get lost in the miasma of hundreds of thousands of other stories and articles and blogs out there, and even if someone runs across it, they probably won't actually read it, and no, it's not the jeans or the shirt, but it's the fat that makes me look fat. Goddamn fat.
But then maybe the piece gets bought by a publication, or someone sends a nice email about it, and then I start to think, yeah, maybe it's not so bad after all. This part is okay. And I really do like this paragraph, and this sentence here. And yeah, it is the shirt that makes me look fat after all! Goddamn shirt.
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More Blogs by Joel Arnold
• The Sucking Suckathon of Suckiness - Monday, May 21, 2012
• Mississippi Pearls and a Car Biding Its Time on the Ice 'til Spring - Thursday, December 29, 2011
• One Decade, One Story - or how One Thing Leads to Another - Wednesday, December 28, 2011
• Racing Minnesota-style! - Wednesday, December 28, 2011
• This Here Minnesota Horror Author was a Big Old Scaredy-Cat - Thursday, December 22, 2011
• Jack the Blob Killer - Monday, December 19, 2011
• Death Rhythm - Tuesday, September 20, 2011
• More Writing What You Know - Monday, September 19, 2011
• How I Interpret 'Write What You Know' - Wednesday, August 03, 2011
• Blessings - or - What I write after having one too many... - Wednesday, August 03, 2011
• 120 Miles in a Canoe - Monday, June 27, 2011
• On Stephen King - Thursday, June 23, 2011
• Why Horror? - Wednesday, June 22, 2011
• Zen & the Art of Swearing - Friday, June 10, 2011
• If Coffee Shops were Run by Airlines - Thursday, May 12, 2011
• Trying to Figure Out What Scares Me - Monday, March 21, 2011
• My Confession - Tuesday, March 08, 2011
• Going Indie with my novel Northwoods Deep - Friday, March 04, 2011
• How I Envision Conflict When Writing - Thursday, March 03, 2011
• Wall Drug - why it's one of my favorite places - Wednesday, February 02, 2011
• Jonesing for a Road Trip - Wednesday, February 02, 2011
• Snowmapocalyptopalooza - Tuesday, February 01, 2011
• How Do You Remember? - Thursday, January 20, 2011
• When your parents are librarians... - Tuesday, January 18, 2011
• The genesis of a novel - the first 6 days - Tuesday, January 04, 2011
• Searching for Truth - Characterization - Thursday, December 16, 2010
• Control - and a little more about Northwoods Deep - Monday, December 13, 2010
• Bukowski - Wednesday, December 08, 2010
• Flies, Flies, Spam, and Flies - Friday, December 03, 2010
• Naivete and the Young Writer - Thursday, December 02, 2010
• For Writers looking for some Adventure - Wednesday, December 01, 2010
• My usual rider for family/friend appearances - Tuesday, November 23, 2010
• Writing and Me - a dramatization - Wednesday, November 17, 2010
• Writing Tip o' the Day (now with vitamin C!) - Tuesday, November 16, 2010
• The Power of Music - Tuesday, November 16, 2010
• To All the Bookstores I've Loved Before - Monday, November 15, 2010
• The Care and Feeding of Writers - Sunday, November 14, 2010
• Rudiments - Thursday, November 11, 2010
• Writing Tip o' the Day - Wednesday, November 10, 2010
• Tragedy - now with 50% more pathos! - Tuesday, November 09, 2010
• Perspective - Monday, November 08, 2010
• The Daunting Dauntiness of Tweeting on Twitter - Saturday, November 06, 2010
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