If you're a writer and you find yourself on the internet browsing for advice about how to be a better writer; a more successful writer; you'll come across a range of suggestions from self-described industry insiders that will span the distance between Somewhat Helpful/Mildly Misleading all the way to Gag-Inducing and everything in between. Personally, I think that stuff is mostly a waste of time;--at least, I've wasted a lot of time and spent a good deal of my insecurity finding out that much of the advice is just flat out wrong. (The same principle can be applied to every Women's Magazine article you've ever read, incidentally.) But, in the interest of being more helpful than the previous appears, I say the following:
The quantity of your unseen writing should dwarf the quantity of your seen writing.
Now, most of the time, that isn't so much a goal as it is the reality of the situation; particularly in the beginning--but it is actually a good thing, though it doesn't feel that way. Every writer wants his or her words to be read. And, I hate the idea of wasting hours on pages and pages that will never be seen by another person. This, however, is the way that it should be. Most of writing is never seen. It is edited, deleted, left forgotten and mouldering in a file somewhere on an old laptop. Scenes without backstory or future. Conversations replete with witticisms that no one will ever chuckle at. Paragraphs and poems, odes and epics all doomed, like that proverbial wildwood flower, to blush unseen. Thousands and thousands of words that are never read or seen by anyone else save the author. It is easy to regard the hours spent on those un-feted words as a waste of time, but they were not. They were the workout. They were the practice that was necessary to produce the final result. The character sketches, the descriptive settings, the opening lines that never reached their closing curtain--all essential in building the skill and refining the artistic eye that produces the one thing worth showing to someone else.
A couple of days ago, I spent most of my workday playing around with dialogue--attempting to write a perfectly comprehensible conversation without any helpful speech tags. No explanation of who is speaking, or helpful adverbs to direct your imagination. Is it comprehensible? You be the judge.
Otherwise, it will never be read by anyone.
“Is it shallow of me to think that I don’t think that I could ever be in a serious relationship with a guy who has an Instagram account?”
“Of course you couldn’t. That isn’t shallow. It’s a strike against shallowness— judgemental, sure, —but not shallow. Guys worth having don’t have Instagram accounts. Preferably they have no social media. But if anything, it’s Twitter—and probably Facebook because we all got those before we realized what we were getting into. But now we’re all too far into the social media honeycomb to get unstuck. No one can claim ignorance. But Instagram for manly men is just not a thing.”
“That was my thought as well.”
“Just out of curiosity, whose Instagram did you see and think, ‘Pass’?”
“Is that really important right now?”
“These thoughts don’t come out of a vacuum. Last night I posted on Facebook that the inventor of three quarter length sleeves should be banished from civilized society, along with whoever created the open-toed boot.”
“What prompted that?”
“Someone posted a video where I was wearing a three quarter length sleeved shirt. They should also be banished.”
“Did you get rid of the shirt?”
“No, because I need it for choir performances. So I’ll just be wearing it like an A-hole for many holidays and special occasions to come. Whose Instagram were you creeping and determined it would never work?”
“Shane’s.”
“The video editing guy?”
“Yeah—it’s tragic.”
“That is tragic. Wait, maybe it was for his work? Instagram accounts for work are okay.”
“He has one of those, too. This was personal.”
“Maybe you should make an exception. He’s heart-stoppin’ handsome. Like, not usually seen in real life.”
“It appears he thinks so, too.”
“Vanity is unattractive is a man—worse than in women. I don’t know why. Still, that's a shame.Maybe you are being too harsh? He seems worth further investigation—you know, just to be sure.”
“He goes on beach holidays and takes artful pictures of his muscle definition.”
“Never mind. Scrape him off. Don’t be me with the three quarter length sleeve equivalent of a boyfriend.”
“Since we’re not dating, done and done.”
“He was dancing around it, though.”
“Maybe, but I think he got distracted taking a picture of himself in black and white.”
“What’s his account? Maybe I should follow it.”
“Nice.”
“Maybe he dabbles in photography?”
“Everyone with an Instagram account dabbles in photography.”
“That’s not entirely true. I follow yours. The last thing that you posted was a picture of a plant you killed.”
“That was photo realism.”
“Yeah, well, that’s really not the point of Instagram.”
“So you can see how Shane and I wouldn’t be a great fit. He understands Instagram. I don’t.”
“He could light your dead plants better. Looks like you overwatered—“
“I did not over water. I gave it the same amount it had been happily imbibing for months. It just did that for no reason. That was the whole point of the post. It was a hashtag #whatthehellplant hashtag #someplantsaresuicidal kind of thing. And, what’s with this reversal? At first you said, of course I couldn’t date a guy with an Instagram account.”
“No, I said you couldn’t be in a serious relationship with a guy with an Instagram account.”
“You said I should ‘scrape him off’.”
“I was overzealous. I didn’t remember what he looked like until I looked him up again just now. It might be worth it. Besides, he could really punch up your Instagram account. Get you a few more followers; maybe you could crack the fifties.”
“Nice.”
“Look, I get it. No one is perfect and vanity is a failing and it looks like it might be his.”
“One doesn’t usually lead with the failing.”
“Vanity isn’t incurable. In the next ten years or so, his looks will start to fade, and the filter use will increase as his Instagram usage decreases…”
“But until then, I can’t compete with that. I’d feel insecure and unattractive. I don’t want to be the one in the relationship with the good personality.”
“Oh—I thought you were just turned off by his vanity. I didn’t realize it was because of your vanity.”
“My insecurity—not my vanity.”
“Other side the coin, kitten. That’s just the other side of the coin."
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