Picking Things Apart

One day, I hope to get it.

One day, I hope that all the years of taking in books on writing, seminars on writing, discussions on writing; poring through novels, publish short stories, unpublished short stories, short stories from workshops; and transmuting all those experiences into my free writes, outlines, shitty rough first drafts, and second-third-fourth-plus drafts will help me understand and write a good story.

In many ways, I hope that “mastery” in writing will become automatic, in the sense that improvement will come without an awareness of it. For a couple of years, I’ve tried to bend my consciousness to become a good writer. I have read stories/novels/books on writing, not to enjoy them but to dissect them. I peered through every sentence, looked at every word and tried to make sense of their organization to see how they achieved their effects. While it’s important to analyze text, I became obsessed over it. It was like cleaning grout from a tiled floor rather than a game of Where’s Waldo? I spent dozens of minutes per sentence. I didn’t get a lot of reading done. In the end, I kept giving up because of the frustration.

So, I’ve thrown away a little bit of the control freak inside of me. I’m less likely to initiate anxiety attacks. It’ll also keep me from repeatedly thudding my head against the wall, metaphorically speaking. But I’ll still maintain a keen eye into the workings of fiction. I just don’t want to look so close that I miss something.