Making Sense

A while ago Kate and I exchanged emails–okay, we do that ALL the time, but this particular email exchange is perfect for an AI post, so today’s post is pretty much actually written by Kate.

I always worry I’m not…enough to write. I can write well, that is, literally construct good sentences, but the CRAFT part, the plotting and such, I feel like I’m so small-minded and not creative enough. I spent my whole childhood trying NOT to stand out, to suppress that part of myself, because I wanted to fit in, and I just worry that now I’m too colour-inside-the-lines and conformist and dull. Does that make sense? I feel dull, craftwise.

And Kate assured me that everyone feels the same way. All the time.

She told me that when she sent a draft of a book to an editor for critique, a lot of the parts where she felt smug and thought, “I’m a unique flower and this verb/metaphor is perfect for me to express myself as a writer;” the editor would essentially comment, “This makes no sense.”

At first, she got really really down about it and then realized that making sense is so much better. The parts of you that you think are straightforward or are not unique actually are…when mixed in with the rest of you. No one will write a story like you do or structure a book like you do, or have the characters that you do. Being a writer is half building your story construction and sentence skills and half coming to terms with who you are and how that reflects in your fiction, no matter what you write.

Will writing always be hard? No. Sometimes it will seem easy and the editing will be hard. Sometimes it will feel like you can’t go on anymore. But when you come back to basics, you have all the skills you need to succeed inside you. The issues comes in that we have psychological hurdles to get over that are not only in who we are as people but how we express ourselves as writers.

Kate’s conclusion was, “Don’t make me tattoo ‘I am enough’ on you. Because I’ll pick a really embarrassing font like Comic Sans.”

She would, too.

 

(Emails reprinted with permission, of course.)

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