The Mistranslated Mental Image

I fin­ished up May 5 & The Assas­sin last week, and re-read the last two episodes the other day. So, for all intents and pur­poses, I’m ready to move on to cre­at­ing a new world, new char­ac­ters, a new nar­ra­tive and fin­ished a new book. I have the world (60%), the first — and pos­si­bly main — two char­ac­ters, the plot and a sto­ry­line, and a few bits in-between (inner strug­gle, drive, secrets etc). I’ve already writ­ten three scenes and suf­fi­ciently devel­oped my pro­tag­o­nist, but a ques­tion loom­ing that I hadn’t really paid much atten­tion to was that of: am I writ­ing as me, or as some­one I want to be?

An open-ended ques­tion, I know, with more than one answer.  I’m not talk­ing emu­lat­ing authors I admire, but in get­ting down the image I have in my head onto the page, and get­ting it right. Let me explain (even if only to myself for self-clarification)…

I wrote the first scene of Only Shad­ows Ahead and posted it online for a week. I’m pretty sure no-one read it — which raises con­cerns over why my Google Ana­lyt­ics lists my daily views as zero for over a month. Sad? Fuck yes, but sus­pi­ciously void con­sid­er­ing pre­vi­ous monthly accounts.

Any­way, back on topic. If any­body had read that piece they may have high­lighted an issue my wife often points out, and that’s a con­stant prob­lem I have with my writ­ing style. See, I write in a man­ner that lends itself to sound­ing a bit melo­dra­matic, per­haps even pompous — as if I’m try­ing to nail every sen­tence as a poem or ode (not my words, swal­low that, ego). I don’t mean too, but I do get stuck on sen­tences some­times and go over them until they’re right instead of just… writ­ing. It’s also not some­thing I try to do, I just end up writ­ing a lot of my stuff like that.

What makes this an issue for me, and not just an opin­ion I can ignore, is that to a good degree, I do agree. I re-read and won­der why it sounds so seri­ous, why the main char­ac­ter is writ­ten in such a straight man­ner; no creases. I see and hear and imag­ine an idea of this man in my head; the ways he might deal with new cir­cum­stances, then when I go to put it down he turns into Bowie and Changes on me.

…you can imag­ine how I feel, this sounds very berserk. I sound like Karl Pilk­in­ton; “Do I con­trol my brain, or does it con­trol me?”

I’ve been fol­low­ing a lot of aspir­ing and estab­lished writ­ers on twit­ter and through blogs this year, try­ing to get back on top of the com­mu­nity I man­aged to estrange myself from because I suck. Every­one seems to have their style nailed, and I have to won­der if they went through sim­i­lar issues, or whether it’s a typ­i­cal thing I’m just pro­cras­ti­nat­ing about instead of WRITING - this is the voice of my sup­port­ive wife, who gives me way more credit than I am due.

So, this is where I am at. I’m approach­ing my first three scenes and think­ing I should re-write them, be more casual and loyal to me and not try to live up to this false idol of what my writ­ing is sup­posed to be like to get any inter­est. Off… I… go…

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=10727131 Jacki Huber

    Don’t most writ­ers go back and rewrite, revise, edit, etc? Some­times you can’t see the for­est for the trees when you’re deep into it, so some time away from it, re-reading as a whole and reflec­tion can help you see what you didn’t or couldn’t when you were in the mid­dle of writ­ing it.

  • http://ryangsanders.com Ryan G. Sanders

    Oh, totally. I’ve had to do that numer­ous times with all of my stuff. I think the big­ger issue here is one of an inter­nal strug­gle (sounds dra­matic). J. says my writ­ing reads like I’m writ­ing it for col­lege grad­u­ates, and to be hon­est I have to agree. The prob­lem there is, that I’m not try­ing to write for them specif­i­cally. In the end, I think I’m just get­ting stuck on mak­ing ‘this’ right, and ‘that’ sound oh so amaz­ing, instead of just writ­ing the God damn thing ;)

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=10727131 Jacki Huber

    So it comes across as forced instead of nat­ural when you over­think it too much, which is a shame because you’re a great sto­ry­teller when you’re just chatting :)

  • http://ryangsanders.com Ryan G. Sanders

    Bingo, and thanks! Nice com­pli­ment, that.

  • http://www.enewman.co.uk Emma New­man

    Hello, I’m finally here after our con­ver­sa­tion on Twitter…

    I’m always reluc­tant to offer advice, as it sug­gests that a) I’m an expert, which I really am not and b) that there is a right and wrong way to write.

    I can how­ever share my expe­ri­ence of writ­ing and maybe it’ll help, though I am a firm believer in hav­ing to find our own way to the writ­ing style that fits us best. 

    The pain you describe here is famil­iar. I strug­gled for years to find my “writer’s voice” (a phrase I hate) and my writ­ing stride and tech­niques to tackle my fears and inner cen­sor that kept me from the page. The only thing that helped me to get any­where with my writ­ing was sim­ply to write. Write — not edit! Writ­ing like I was run­ning down a road and not look­ing back, not wor­ry­ing about where I’d been or what I looked like. The impor­tant thing was to keep going. 

    It’s so tempt­ing to go back and re-work and re-work when you’re stuck in a ner­vous state and still find­ing your style. But style is some­thing that evolves over time, over thou­sands and thou­sands of words — new words — that you can revisit a long time afterwards.

    The only clue I had that my writ­ing was approach­ing some­thing half-bearable was that I could read it three months later and not want to vomit. I could read it and see where the rough spots needed sand­ing down, but I didn’t want to die of shame. And it took years to get to that point. The only way I got there was by ignor­ing that inner cen­sor, the one wor­ry­ing about what peo­ple will think when they read it — even about what you will think when you read it. Just get the words down.

    A book I found very help­ful was ‘The Artist’s Way’ — it has lots of exer­cises for you to explore the roots of blocks and fears and rec­on­cile them. 

    Also, as I said on Twit­ter, every time I feel that fear, I say out loud “I give myself per­mis­sion to write com­plete crap” and it really does help me. I have to do it every time I approach a first draft — and I am near­ing the end of my third novel with a short story anthol­ogy under my belt too. I hope that shows that this fear is nor­mal, and that it is pos­si­ble to find a way through it.

    Oh, I hope this helps! Keep at it. Maybe write a few sto­ries and promise your­self that no-one else will see them. I’m usu­ally lurk­ing some­where on Twit­ter if you need some support. 

    Em x

  • http://ryangsanders.com Ryan G. Sanders

    Thank you for the boost and kind words. Many of the prob­lems men­tioned in this post have given me strife over the last year or two. After I fin­ished my first book, I think I lost my way sub­stan­tially. It seemed to feel like an escape, as opposed to an achieve­ment — I was finally get­ting it ‘done’, instead of suc­ceed­ing in accom­plish­ing some­thing — and that’s no healthy way to write, I know.

    I’ve started a few projects since, and all but my May 5 ser­ial have stop-started. I’m not sure why, but when I think of an idea, some­thing that inter­ests me and has poten­tial (and I like to think I have some orig­i­nal­ity in my ideas), I get to it after a bit of mild plan­ning and… then… it tails off. I get dis­tracted by other things and don’t give it the com­mit­ment it/they need.

    Writ­ing, for a while now, has felt like a chal­lenge for me. I do not approach it in the same way I used too, and now down to a lack of con­fi­dence I think, I just don’t hold my work in any esteem. If all it took was oth­ers say­ing ‘good job’, that would be one thing, but there’s some­thing inside of me that’s just deflated. It’s an annoy­ing mys­tery, and one I’m con­stantly at bat­tle with

    I’m work­ing on a short story now — this time — and I’m hop­ing it will go a bit bet­ter than a book. Hop­ing that some­how, the chal­lenge being smaller than a novel, it will allow me (or my sub­con­scious) to chill out and let me just type. We’ll see.