The Writer Formerly Known As Me

I was inspired this week by a blog post from a Twitter friend, Susan May. She discusses how writers are not only competing with other writers, but more importantly, with ourselves.

In her post, "Your Biggest Competition--You", she says:

I spend every day separating myself from the Writer Me of the day before with a few more thousand words of experience. I hope next year, also, to be encouraged by my improvement and grateful to the Writer Me who spent another year working at her apprenticeship by belting out pages and pages of good and bad writing.

Before reading her post, I hadn't really thought of competing with myself, or more accurately, my former self. But in a sense, that is what is occurring. I'm doing my best to learn and improve so I can distance myself from that writer.

At the same time I look back with genuine fondness on The Writer Formerly Known As Me. I can see how much I've grown, and advanced, as a result of my devotion to my manuscripts.

I can see exactly when I finally understood how to use one POV, giving up head hopping forever, even though it was a practice that was in vogue and made perfect sense to me when I started to write stories. Now I comprehend what a powerful tool POV is, and how much more control of the storyline I have when I utilize one POV per scene.

From this vantage point in time, I can also see how episodic my stories were back then. I was so enthralled with these lifelike characters that seemed to appear almost magically on my pages. I didn't really know how to motivate my characters. And why on earth did they need goals? I was happy to move them around from scene to scene, as if they were paper dolls, because I was enchanted with every word they uttered, even if it was complete nonsense.

When I got rejections on my manuscripts, I found out not everyone felt the same way I did about my stories. However, they did enjoy my characters, and that's when I realized I would have to give the poor heroes and heroines something to do besides charm the heck out of me.

Those early writing attempts also gave me the first glimpse of my voice. I hadn't learned to trust it just then. I knew there was something lively about my stories, something vivacious, but I didn't quite understand the value of it. I know now it's how I tell my stories, and each time I scribbled something new, I discovered more about my writing personality, until I grew comfortable in it.

Each story teaches me something I hadn't quite mastered before, or gives me a chance to practice another element a little while longer. I'm still learning how to do a lot of things, and I hope I never stop adding to my store of writerly knowledge.

Still, each story makes me fall in love with writing again, and makes me look back with awe at my enthusiasm when I knew so little about what I was attempting. Sometimes it's best not to know what you're getting into ahead of time. I might have stopped if I'd realized how heartbreaking the writing process can be, when the muse flees or the words freeze up.

Fortunately it was the exhilaration that kept me moving forward, doggedly, until I got to meet The Writer I Am Today.

There's still plenty of journey ahead, and I can't wait til we get to meet up with The Writer I Will Be.

I just know we're gonna have a lot of stories to share.

Comments

[Quantum]

Lovely way to visualise the learning process Donna. Passing the baton from past to present to future.

The writer you will be is going to be awesome and totally irresistible.
Though yesterday I would have said that about the writer you are today.

Where do I sign up for the fan club? *smile*

[Donna Cummings]

Thanks, Q. You always say the loveliest things. Which is why you're the president of the fan club. LOL Didn't I tell you that? :) But not to worry--the duties aren't too difficult. Yet. LOL