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Tuesday, June 5, 2012

When I Want to Burn Everything I've Ever Written

You know what I hate? Spending hours writing, then at the end of the day deciding all of what you wrote needed to be trashed. It's all worthless. It can't be used, and salvaging it would take as long as it took to write. Monkeys could have sat at a computer and typed random letters, and come up with something better than this.

It's on this kind of day I want to stand on my roof and scream for the entire world to hear,

"IT'S NOT WORTH IT!"

However, like every other day like this that I've experienced, it usually means I just need to move on. Copy and paste the 4,205 words of nonsense and an entire week of work to a file of such passages, and work on something else. I wonder if actually printing the pages and burning it would help me feel better. I bet on a good day I could think of some nice way to conclude this post with something meaningful that would make me feel better, but nothing's coming to me. So I conclude with the wise words of April Ludgate: "hard work never pays off."


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4 comments:

  1. Shannon M.June 5, 2012 at 5:08 PM

    Ohhh, Becca ... I know how you feel. I do this on a small scale with something everyday. I'm the kind of person where if something isn't completely right, I'd rather start over.

    Everything has it's highs and lows. When something is discouraging, I go back and re-visit when it was going well. It's encouraging, and a great motivation to keep trudging through. Maybe you should re-read, or think back to, positive comments people have made about your book.

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    1. Becca FrenchJune 10, 2012 at 2:42 PM

      I think you're right, Shannon. Going back and seeing how God has brought me here often gives me a boost to keep going. I try to keep a list of all the little ways He's provided for me in order to write this book for times like these. It's all in the little things, that often aren't that little :)

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  2. JonJune 10, 2012 at 12:36 AM

    I understand your pain! I can't tell you how many times I've started a piece, written 60 measures, realized it was crap, and started over.

    Tchaikovsky once said that there are two types of acts of creation: the inspired and the everyday. It is not hard to write when inspired, but the true measure of an artist (or writer) is how they persevere and create when they're not inspired. Putting the time in, like I know you are, makes you improve your craft immensely. You won't be sorry you've kept going!

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    1. Becca FrenchJune 10, 2012 at 2:40 PM

      Thank you, Jonathan! That's really encouraging. I honestly have no idea why I'm still going, because feeling this way is all too familiar. God keeps me going more than anything. It's just another reminder to me that God gets all of the glory, I'm not responsible for any of this.

      So keep composing! And don't give up. And let me listen to something you've composed sometime: :)

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