On the importance of Confidence
Confidence is one of the most important traits that a writer can have. This can be an easy thing to say (almost glib really) but a much harder thing to put in practice. Especially if you're an indie/small press/unpublished writer. Sometimes there are dark days when you question why you're spending the time, why you're creating this world. Will anyone care? Will anyone buy it? Will anyone like it?
Doubt is the enemy of creativity. It will seep into your fiction and destroy all your hard work. This is one reason why I write as fast as possible, spending little time on fact-checking, grammar checking or research. I save these things for my editing process. When the doubt is more or less at bay. Of course, it's always there, it's just that when I've actually completed the manuscript it seems to have been de-clawed.
The place I most often see doubt in fiction (from established writers and novices alike) is in vocabulary.
Writers seem to be so doubtful of their vocabulary. It's as if they think-"I'm a writer! Everyone expects that I will know words they've never even imagined existed".
I can assure you that I've never thought that a writer had a small vocabulary when I was reading a book. I've never heard anyone else complain of this either. It's hard to miss salubrious when it's not there on the page.
What I have heard, is readers complaining that they had to look a word up and then thinking that the writer didn't really use it correctly.
My wife is currently reading Hemlock Grove by Brian McGreevy. Now this is not a commentary on Mr. McGreevy's ability to write (I haven't read the book) but more on something that I think many writers use as a crutch-the thesaurus.
My wife has asked me about several words that he uses in his book. Many of them seem an approximation of what he wants to say, but not exactly what he wants to say.
One example will serve to show my point:
Peter seized Letha's arm and pulled her out the back door. Not thinking, but heedless obeisance to his most basic instinct.
Here is why that word (wonderful as it is) is not right in the context. Obeisance is defined as a physical movement of respect, such as bowing. Or as deferential respect to an authority figure.
It is used for a definite article, such as a deity or royalty, and not for an indefinite concept such as someone's "basic instinct".
I mean, he's literally saying that this guy worships his instinct.
Herein lies the problem. Too often, writers feel doubt when it comes to their vocabulary. They believe that if they could only find an "important" word it would lend weight to their writing.
But stiffness and weight is not the key to good writing.
Among other things, clarity is the key to good writing. Clarity of thought and idea. That is why doubt is so dangerous-doubt destroys the clarity.
This is the danger of using a thesaurus. Doubtless, Mr. McGreevy meant to convey that the character was obeying his basic instinct and I'm willing to guess that was the first word that popped into his head. Then, either while writing or later in the editing process, someone (it easily could have been an editor-they have doubts too) decided that obeisance sounded better.
Maybe it rolls off the tongue better, but it's not really what the writer meant.
The first word that you think of when you're writing is almost always the best one. The one that hits on the thought you're trying to convey most closely.
There is no need to doubt your vocabulary. Readers are not going to judge you for it. Perhaps snobbish elites will (they live to criticize anything) but they aren't the audience you're writing to-I pray.
Consider this passage:
Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling.
The thoughts and feelings of this passage are complex, the grammar complex. The language, the vocabulary, is basically at a fifth grade level.
This quote is from John Steinbeck's, "The Grapes of Wrath" and it is called one of the best books of the last one-hundred years. Steinbeck is regarded as a genius.
And no one ever accused him of having a small vocabulary.
When it comes to vocabulary I believe what you have is what you use. You don't have to search outside of yourself for some fancy, dressed-up word to say what you mean.
Don't let the doubt win. Say what you mean, in your own words. Not in the words of Funk and Wagnalls.
Doubt is the enemy of creativity. It will seep into your fiction and destroy all your hard work. This is one reason why I write as fast as possible, spending little time on fact-checking, grammar checking or research. I save these things for my editing process. When the doubt is more or less at bay. Of course, it's always there, it's just that when I've actually completed the manuscript it seems to have been de-clawed.
The place I most often see doubt in fiction (from established writers and novices alike) is in vocabulary.
Writers seem to be so doubtful of their vocabulary. It's as if they think-"I'm a writer! Everyone expects that I will know words they've never even imagined existed".
I can assure you that I've never thought that a writer had a small vocabulary when I was reading a book. I've never heard anyone else complain of this either. It's hard to miss salubrious when it's not there on the page.
What I have heard, is readers complaining that they had to look a word up and then thinking that the writer didn't really use it correctly.
My wife is currently reading Hemlock Grove by Brian McGreevy. Now this is not a commentary on Mr. McGreevy's ability to write (I haven't read the book) but more on something that I think many writers use as a crutch-the thesaurus.
My wife has asked me about several words that he uses in his book. Many of them seem an approximation of what he wants to say, but not exactly what he wants to say.
One example will serve to show my point:
Peter seized Letha's arm and pulled her out the back door. Not thinking, but heedless obeisance to his most basic instinct.
Here is why that word (wonderful as it is) is not right in the context. Obeisance is defined as a physical movement of respect, such as bowing. Or as deferential respect to an authority figure.
It is used for a definite article, such as a deity or royalty, and not for an indefinite concept such as someone's "basic instinct".
I mean, he's literally saying that this guy worships his instinct.
Herein lies the problem. Too often, writers feel doubt when it comes to their vocabulary. They believe that if they could only find an "important" word it would lend weight to their writing.
But stiffness and weight is not the key to good writing.
Among other things, clarity is the key to good writing. Clarity of thought and idea. That is why doubt is so dangerous-doubt destroys the clarity.
This is the danger of using a thesaurus. Doubtless, Mr. McGreevy meant to convey that the character was obeying his basic instinct and I'm willing to guess that was the first word that popped into his head. Then, either while writing or later in the editing process, someone (it easily could have been an editor-they have doubts too) decided that obeisance sounded better.
Maybe it rolls off the tongue better, but it's not really what the writer meant.
The first word that you think of when you're writing is almost always the best one. The one that hits on the thought you're trying to convey most closely.
There is no need to doubt your vocabulary. Readers are not going to judge you for it. Perhaps snobbish elites will (they live to criticize anything) but they aren't the audience you're writing to-I pray.
Consider this passage:
Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling.
The thoughts and feelings of this passage are complex, the grammar complex. The language, the vocabulary, is basically at a fifth grade level.
This quote is from John Steinbeck's, "The Grapes of Wrath" and it is called one of the best books of the last one-hundred years. Steinbeck is regarded as a genius.
And no one ever accused him of having a small vocabulary.
When it comes to vocabulary I believe what you have is what you use. You don't have to search outside of yourself for some fancy, dressed-up word to say what you mean.
Don't let the doubt win. Say what you mean, in your own words. Not in the words of Funk and Wagnalls.
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