I’m writing something now. I’m almost always writing something. When I write and it’s going well, it’s a feeling that I can only compare to being high, a low-grade euphoria. The writer, Russell Smith, once compared it to flying and it’s that too. (I am waiting to get permission to quote him but until then you have to just read my thoughts here.) Anyway, the point is, it’s a wonderful feeling.
What’s not wonderful is going back and reading what I’ve just written. The sentences I thought were brilliant turn out to be subpar, the diamonds become turds and I feel embarrassed for even thinking that things were going well. But eventually I go back to it and edit and most of the time end up with something decent.
Stuff gets published.
Based on this entry you’re probably surprised that stuff of mine gets published but it does. I am surprised too, till this day. I grew up with one dream: to be a writer. I wanted nothing else. In retrospect, that was a stupid wish; I wish now I’d wished for money or a non-addictive personality… but here we are. So I deal with my lot of having had my wish granted but even though it’s been 22 years since I published my first short story in English, and almost a decade since I published my first book, some days I still can’t get over it—I have a fucking book out there? Correction. I have six books out there? (Three of the ghostwritten, three under my name). And countless short stories and anthologies?
This is not a brag or humble brag, this is to say that despite having some evidence that I’m possibly okay at what I do, I still rarely believe that and I also feel a lot of … shame around it. So I’ve been trying to examine that and it’s part fraud syndrome and part not having had a confirmation in the form of having a major success, like where I could (delusionally?) believe that money equals quality (a journalist friend who interviewed E.L. James said the author got very defensive when asked what she thinks about people thinking her writing was trash) (although who wouldn’t get defensive?).
I mean, okay, my first book was a bestseller and so was my second one (in Canada) but I haven’t had the sort of success that, I don’t know, would allow me to buy a house, so yes, I’m talking about commercial success, and financial success. But also the sort of success I see other writers have who see their books made into films, and who are critically acclaimed as well, who tour the world and who are a household name… whose reviews on Goodreads are above 4.5 (mine are low 3s) and there’s thousands of those reviews, meaning lots of people read them. That is the best kind of fame, perhaps, being recognized for your work (but not your face or your sex tape).
I mean, why am I doing what I’m doing if I’m not the best at it? Why am I settling for this? These are private and shameful thoughts that I have all the time and I suspect many other artists go through this kind of self-reproach… I mean, it’s no secret that artists are tortured. And I know that lack of commercial / financial success doesn’t mean that what I do isn’t good, but I still have so much guilt about doing it, about not being able to provide my son with a better life, for example, about myself having to live on a budget, producing all those words, words, words – what are all those words for? What is the point?
It’s that kind of a Shameday today.
But now I have to go and write more pointless words that will probably eventually become pointless novel.