Quotes from Rapunzel in this segment of the movie:
“I can’t believe I did this!”
“Oh my gosh. This would kill her.”
“This is so fun!”
“I. Am. A horrible daughter. I’m going back.”
“I’m never going back!”
“I am a despicable human being.”
Yeah, us writers feel this bipolar-ness when it comes to our own work.
I have been swinging from one side to another about my craft for years, so that’s nothing new. However, I feel like I’ve been all over the place lately. Someone will compliment my writing and it’ll make me feel great, but then a particular feedback comment will make me feel like I have a long way to go still. (Why is it that some days I love feedback and other days absolutely detest it?)
For example, I had another short story of mine workshopped in class last week. I was already nervous about it because it had a different format than my last one and I was worried that my classmates wouldn’t “get” a few things that were going on within it.
For the most part, my classmates said good things about it (and that’s always nice to hear). But then people started to get super picky about certain lines that weren’t working. Part of me goes, “Great! That’s an easy fix. I can do that.” And then another part of me goes, “Is the writing/story really that bad?”
Of course, it didn’t help that my professor decided to sit next to me. I kept glancing at all the marks and final feedback notes that he’d do for me and my other two classmates that also had their stories read. My biggest competitor in the class happened to have his story read on the same day as mine, so guess who fell down the rabbit hole for the rest of the class?
Statements/Questions that entered my mind during this time:
“All these nitpicky notes on my story must be a good thing, right? Because my professor did this to my other story, too (the one that he loved). He doesn’t really go into this much depth with other people’s stories.”
“Who am I kidding? Look at the detail that my rival did with his story!”
“Why do my professor’s final notes for my story look different than my competitor’s? Mine consist of four small paragraphs and the other guy has one huge paragraph? Maybe it’s just because his story was eleven more pages than mine? And am I really analyzing the format of feedback?”
“It looks like there are more slashes on my draft than on my rival’s. That can’t be good, right?”
…
“What if everyone is just lying to me?”
You’d think that all this paranoia would remain in my workshops. (I’m not going to count my poetry workshop because I don’t really care much about my poems. Sorry.) But it doesn’t.
I get told by the Creative Writing director that I have “excellent writing skills” (all I did was send her an e-mail…), but then later deflate upon realizing that I didn’t win anything in a particular writing contest.
Up. Down. Left. Right. Forward. Back.
Writing is hard.
The trick is to find your own Flynn Rider from Tangled. You know, someone who will walk with you on your journey toward your dreams. Even if it involves reverse psychology.
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