Writers' lies and having the tired

[mrissa]

I've been thinking more about the Writers' Lies panel I was on with skzbrust, pameladean, 1crowdedhour, willshetterly, and klages. matociquala asked the panelists how she could find -- how one could find, really -- positive lies to overtake the negative ones. How to tell herself, "I can fix it on the next draft," or, "This will touch someone in a positive way," rather than, "Any skill or talent I may have acquired in the writing of previous works has since drained out my ears, leaving my skull an empty and rattling thing." Or like that. Um. Examples mine.

And I wonder if the answer is that once you're doing it deliberately, once it's not your brain singing on autopilot, lies won't work, and you have to settle for the truth. I'm not sure, but it seems like that might be a grain of commonality in the responses some people had. Perhaps this is the tired speaking, and there are really all sorts of ways to deliberately cultivate belief in positive writers' lies instead of either stumbling upon them or settling for the truth.

I can has the tired, you see. Even after forty-five minutes of lie-down this afternoon after the sushi expedition, I am a Mrissish nubbin. I have been running on determination and joy since Thursday. It's good fuel, but one has to use the more traditional food and sleep at some point. This is apparently that point. And as much as I enjoyed the conversations at Fourth Street, and I definitely don't want to downplay that, for me personally one of the lovely parts of the whole weekend was watching people I like be warm and kind to people I love, and vice versa. It was not universal, of course; it never is. But the extent of it made me pretty happy. I bask.

Tomorrow I have a PT retest in the late afternoon, to see what kind of progress we're making with all this in an objective way. I have no idea what else will pop out regarding panels and other conversations before then. Possibly nothing. I think the proximity of the two is sort of a weird space, so...I'll do the best I can, which is all we can ever do.

Comments

[aedifica]

I enjoyed getting to meet you in person, and I'm glad you got to run on determination and joy rather than determination alone! (Me too, though I probably needed less determination than you--mine was just for keeping going with so little sleep.) I realized I don't remember which Ngaio Marsh books it was, so I've emailed the person who recommended them to me and I'll let you know when I hear from her.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It was good to get to meet you, too!

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

Maybe a way to replace the negative lies is to send me some fiction. I'll tell you positive truths to replace them :)
...That only works if you trust me, of course. Also if I read things, which involves not having teh sick.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Hi, Shweta! (I knew you had good taste :-)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, not having teh sick! I vote for that.

[shweta-narayan.livejournal.com]

Me too, for you too!

I'm constantly surprised how many people we know in common, m'ris. "You know m'ris?" was one of the first things voidmonster said to me, too. (hi dichroic! I knew *you* had good taste!)

[jiawen]

I thought the panel needed a discussion of antidepressants. Maybe that was addressed before I got there.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Not at all, no, but -- and perhaps I'm wrong -- I'm afraid I wouldn't have had a great deal to say about that, and I'm not sure about the other panelists, either. I think my comments would have boiled down to:

1) Depression is a serious illness. If you are clinically depressed, attempting to find good treatment options is as important as it would be if you had any other illness, such as diabetes. That treatment is between you and your doctor (and possibly any close friends and relations you have chosen to consult on the matter) but should not rule out some combination of antidepressants, talk therapy, and investigation of other potential organic causes without investigation.

2) If you find that your self-talk about your writing is overwhelmingly negative regardless of outside results, it may be time to self-examine to see if you notice other symptoms. Honesty is important here; lies won't do.

But I really don't want to put myself in a position of diagnosing people with any particular ailment, short of a broken bone protruding through the skin. Writers' lies can be positive or negative without being a sign of illness, and people's experiences of antidepressants vary so widely that I'm just not sure that this panel with these panelists would have been a useful place to discuss them in any depth.

[jiawen]

Yes. I think saying what you said above would've been enough.

[aedifica]

Were you there for the Shadow Unit panel? When the panelists were asked what they would have done differently if they had it to do over, I believe Emma said she'd have gone on antidepressants earlier. For a moment she gave an example of if she hadn't gone on them at all (I think she said something like "otherwise I'd be thinking 'this is what normal is for me these days'"), and it was scary to see her body language change from vivacious and outgoing (or at least able to play it for a con, I don't know her personally) to utterly lacking in energy.

[jiawen]

I was there for that panel. I heard the beginning of Emma's statement but not the end. I wondered if the conversation was going to swerve briefly into antidepressant territory, but it didn't. I think a fuller mention of antidepressants -- basically, what mrissa said above -- would still have been good in the Lies panel.

[aedifica]

I didn't mean to imply that because of Emma's single reference to antidepressants, the topic was covered in depth--far from it. :-) I just thought you might be interested in hearing about it if you weren't there for that one.

[jiawen]

Ah, I see. Thank you for mentioning it (and, after all, you heard more of Emma's comment than I did).

[caoilfhionn.livejournal.com]

Hello. Here by way of the con, and aedifica, and a bunch of other places.

The Writers' Lies panel was one of my favorites of the weekends. To respond to your thought here, couldn't cultivating belief in positive lies could be a deliberate counter to the temptation to believe that the talent is gone? In my experience, I tell myself lies that I'm great and lies that I'm terrible, and the lies that I'm a hopelessly bad writer seem so much more likely. So creating lies to the contrary makes it less likely that I'll give up working to get from decent writing to publishable writing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

As always, the first rule of writing is, if it works, it works.

But matociquala was noting that she's finding it difficult to get the good lies to stick. I think that when that's the case, the truth of last resort might be necessary. Bits of truth like, "I can do all sorts of things I couldn't do ten years ago," or, "Smart people liked my last story," or even, "Smart people liked some component of my last story."

When we're creating verisimilitude in fiction, concrete details are a good way to do that. I suspect that small concrete truths may help move the lie of, "I can write this well," into being a reality.

[prettymuchpeggy.livejournal.com]

I like to think of "small concrete truths" as my shiny things shelf. My shiny things shelf is filled with compliments from varying sorts, markers past, and myriad of possitive thoughts, quotes, etc. to do with my craft. Sometimes I feel as if I have exaggerated the items on that shelf's magnitude - a little like a puffer fish. Some would say "yes", some would say "no". Regardless, I consider them truths that help me get past the hard spots.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

There are a couple of short e-mails I have more or less memorized because I take them out to see what people said about me or stuff I've made.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Certainly lies like, "I can fix it on the next draft," aren't exactly lies - maybe 'Schroedinger lies' - as whether or not they are actually lies depends on what you do in the future. You can make them into truths by actually fixing that on the next draft.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I totally agree! Lies that you know are lies don't work, at least for me. For example (although this may well be a counterexample for everyone else):

I'm generally a little late to things (save your surprised face for someone else). But setting my clocks ahead has never worked for me--and not for lack of trying--because I look at the clock and think, "Yeah, but that clock is fast," before I get to, "Oh my gosh, I'm late!" I know the clock is lying, so forget it.

[aedifica]

Yeah, I've never understood how that one was supposed to work. Even half-asleep I can translate from "the time the alarm clock shows" to "the time it really is" (I used to live with someone who set the clock forward odd amounts such as 43 minutes).