Windfall

[dreamer_easy]

I had an epiphany in the middle of the night, thanks to the Zen nun I left murmuring on my iPod. I've been feeling frustrated and unworthy because I haven't yet got an original SF novel published, let alone won the Hugo, Nebula, Tiptree, Ditmar, despairing love of all humanity, etc. This is doing things backwards. An apple tree isn't trying to make apples, or thinking 'Why haven't I made apples yet, all my mates are making fantastic apples, I'm never gonna make these freakin' apples'. It just makes a bunch of apples, because that's a hoot, and also because it's an apple tree. Like everything in nature, then, I shall be goalless.

Comments

[george potter (from livejournal.com)]

That's really the best attitude to take. It relieves pressure, and --in my experience -- pressure can be a real enemy to the creative process. When I was younger, and broke through the 'must finish the stories I start' barrier, I made myself a detailed list. I'd sell this many stories to the semi-prozines (rising up the pennies-per-word-scale, natch!) then break into the pro-mags, then write a novel, etc. etc.

Well, it didn't work out that way. I turned out to just not be a novelist. 25,000 words seems to be a pretty damned hard and fast limit for me, and even stories of that length tend to be written over the course of years, with long breaks in between 5,000 word bursts. 5,000 words, actually, seems to be my natural habitat. A little longer or shorter, depending, but always fairly close to that.

But as long as I tried to follow my list, I sold nothing. It wasn't until, a couple years ago, that I threw the thing away and decided to take a year off from submitting (just write for grins n' giggles) that I started to make semi-pro sales. These days I've gotten a little too lax (I really need to get back to a daily quota, that worked well for productivity if nothing else), but I'm enjoying everything I write again, since it's coming without that deep seated dread question: "I wonder if *editor* will like this?' :)