Raring to go? Or Reluctant to Show?

Some things you need to know how to do before you do it. Like, skydiving. You need to know a little bit about skydiving before you jump out of a plane. 'Figuring it out' probably isn't the greatest idea.

This principle also applies to juggling chainsaws, heart surgery, and wiring a house's electrical system. These things require research, foreknowledge, and practice without having to do the real thing.

Having said that, if all you ever did was research how to skydive, you'd miss out on the whole point of researching... the dive itself!

I think this can also apply to writing. When you write a book, you don't send your first draft of the first seriously written piece of work you ever write. That thing is going to be full of junk 99% of the time. If you don't invest some real time into it, it just isn't going to work.

Getting a book published isn't just something you add to your list of things to do today. It's not for the faint of heart, and it's not for impatient people. I've been noticing this a lot lately.

There's so much practice that goes into this before you do the 'real thing' and go for an agent. I've personally been working seriously on the craft of writing for years. There are thousands of people who have worked much harder and longer than I have who are still unpublished.

I feel like most writers fall into one of two categories. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me like either we are:

A: Raring to go.

or

B: Reluctant to show.

Raring to Go

These are the people who can't wait to get their novel published. They whip out their pens/laptops and write furiously until their nobel prize worthy masterpiece is born. This child, like an infant in a doctor's hands, is handed over to agent after agent in search of someone willing to bring him to adulthood. But no one is willing, 'cause this is one messed up kid.

Often when we're so eager to get something out, we overlook little errors, inconsistencies, or big picture issues. It's our baby after all. Of course it's perfect! What we don't realize is that not everyone sees this child through rose-coloured glasses. We need a healthy dose of reality. We need to wake up and realize that our work may just not be perfect after one draft.

Reluctant to Show

These people have the opposite problem of never taking their writing anywhere but the drawing board. They're convinced it will never be good enough, and that they must do continual edits on it. Before anyone can ever see it, it needs to be perfect. So it stays tucked in a desk drawer, never to be brought out, or sitting in an unmarked folder in the corner of the screen.

We're so afraid of rejection that we'll do anything to put off hearing the truth about our skill level. Yes. You may be average. No, you're probably not the next Tolkein. But you know what? THAT'S OK. No one really wants another author who wrote just like Tolkein. It would get old to have little identical copy cats of famous authors running around. Who would be left to reinvent a genre? Who would be there to make that next B-Level novel to satiate the masses of consumers of normal, run-of-the-mill books?

You may not be as great as you hoped. Oh no. But wouldn't you rather at least know than spend your whole life wondering? Wouldn't that be better?


What we writers need to do is find a happy medium. Somewhere between practicing forever, and never practicing at all. Somewhere between total confidence, and no confidence whatsoever. A place where we are free to make mistakes, but wisely choose to make as few as possible. A place where it's actually possible to get published.

All in all, a place of relative normalcy... whatever that is.


So what are you? Raring to Go? Or Reluctant to Show?