It wasn’t until I heard and finally understood these sage words that I could calm down about my writing and stop worrying that it wasn’t “good enough”. At first, I would feel discouraged when my first drafts were boring, inarticulate or not very artful. I had this idea that “true writers” could spew out beauty on their first try, and it was this “talent” that distinguished them from the rest of us.
Then I realized that writers are really wordsmiths. Often, works of art need many pass-overs, several re-tries and tons of edits. It takes practice, time, focussed energy.
I’m now in the process of revising and editing my second novel. Of course, I’ve been rewriting all along, but now I’m looking at the entire piece and seeing what needs changing. It’s at this stage that I become most doubtful and self-conscious in my writing. My readers start to take shape (really my inner critics), and I wonder what “they” will think of the craft and the story. For me, this is the hardest part of writing, and I cut and paste, lean on the delete key, and move around huge passages as though they were puzzle pieces. And then I might undo everything I just did and decide it was better as it was. I’m less involved in my characters’ lives, and more involved in my own, suddenly!
And then, the challenge is to remember who drove the story in the first place. The characters, or me?