Creating

[rowyn]

I like illustrating.

Pretty much everything about it. I don't even care that much what medium I use. Sketching, painting, using pastels, markers, even digital can be fun. I just like making pictures. It's fun.

I don't have a lot of use for the pictures I make. I don't much like my own artwork. It's not that I hate it, but off the top of my head I can think of over half a dozen artists just from my LJ friends list whose art I'd rather hang on my walls. I don't have any of my own artwork hanging up now, in fact. Basically, I like making pictures but I don't particularly care about having made pictures. I get a modest degree of 'yay, I did something creative' satisfaction from it, and if someone else likes it then I'm happy to have made something nice for them. But I seldom have any use for my creations myself.

Writing is the opposite. Generally, I love my own writing. This is something writers are not supposed to admit, and heck maybe most of them don't feel it. Maybe they feel the same way about their books that I feel about my artwork. But I love my books. When I wrote Silver Scales, I was trying to write the sort of book I wanted to read, and I succeeded. Wildly. I've probably read that book a dozen times, not because I was editing it but because I was bored and felt like reading it, or because I was digging for some tidbit and wound up reading 200 pages before I found it. I adore that book. It's my favorite book ever. There, I said it: it's my favorite book ever and I wrote it. How many people can say that?

I'm not saying that it's great literature or amazingly well-written or anything. It's not a masterpiece for the ages. I have read hundreds of books which were deeper or more profound or had more style or wit or charm. It's just, well, Silver Scales is exactly the kind of book I enjoy reading. So I'm very glad to have written it.

But I don't like writing. Writing is work. It's tedious and I feel like I'm never going to finish anything and it goes on forever and this bit is sooooooo booooooooring I should skip it and go on to the next but I don't know what that is and oh man why am I bothering I should play another game of Race for the Galaxy instead.

Or paint a picture.

I'm not sure if this is a true-for-now thing or a true-for-always. Actually, I am sure: this is only a true-for-now thing. The bit about writing has been true for the last few years. The bit about art I only noticed sometime in January. Maybe if I made as many pictures as I've written pages, I'd be sick of drawing and painting too.

Maybe if I did a 30in30 for writing, I'd rediscover how to love writing again.

Maybe I'll try that some time this month. But first, I'm gonna finish this picture I'm working on.

Comments

[the-vulture.livejournal.com]

Well, with art, I imagine you create a finite piece of work in a relatively short time compared to say WRITING A NOVEL. O.O

Maybe, to help you get your literary groove going, you should loosen up with some shorter works something finished but with less monumental-ness to 'em. Word count limited short stories might be an answer.

Just me thinkin'...

[rowyn]

I did that with the "Word of the Indefinite Time Period" stories, but it didn't really help. Even writing LJ entries is an effort -- I'd been meaning to write this one for several days before I finally did it. O.o

[the-vulture.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... Is it because you think very literarily and find your thoughts come to mind way faster than you can actually physically write/type, leading to frustration?

Or could be the other way: you are far more visually oriented in your thinking, hence why images are more fun to make?

[rowyn]

I don't think it's either of those -- I think it's that I spent so long trying to finish books and committing to writing that I've convinced myself "writing is work". And I don't wanna work. v.v

[beetiger.livejournal.com]

If the one you are working on is mine, then yay!

[rowyn]

It is! I'm almost done with the background. (I do the background first, usually. I've heard that you're suppposed to, it's good for the soul or something. >:) At the least, it gets it out of the way so I can move on to the *fun* parts.)

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

Writers aren't supposed to like their own writing? Why would they write, then?

[rowyn]

I don't know. Because they think it's fun? Why do I draw? I'm not sure myself. :)

I think most writers do like their own writing, but I'm not sure it's common to like it better than anyone else's. In author interviews, I don't think I've ever seen one answer "what's your favorite book?" with one of their own. Maybe that's just modesty, but I think it's pretty common for authors to genuinely like the work of some other authors better than their own.

[zaimoni.livejournal.com]

Well...besides narcissism being taboo, frankly I would hope most writers would have some "exemplars" they're trying to learn/improve their style from. And I would hope it's very plausible that at least one of those "exemplars" is even more enjoyable than their own work.

[rowyn]

Yes, I think that's normally the case. And there are lots of writers that I think are better than I am. My preference for my own book is a matter of taste & subject matter, not skill. :)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Maybe you should put Silver Scales together and send it off to a publisher! };)

[rowyn]

... possibly.

But I have a whole bunch of pretty stupid excuses reasons not to!

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

And a lot of encouraging fans reasons to! };)

[jongibbs.livejournal.com]

'I was trying to write the sort of book I wanted to read, and I succeeded.'

That should be every author's goal :)

[rowyn]

Strangely, it wasn't my goal with the first book I finished writing. But I've been trying for it since. :)