Every writer I know, whether they’ve written one novel, two novels, or twenty-five novels, at some point had to deal with the “Am I crazies” before they found publication.
You probably know what I’m talking about: the “Am I crazies” are that feeling you get where you’re spending so much time writing a novel or multiple novels, your friends and family are wondering what you’re doing, and you have no idea whatsoever whether you will ever see publication. You could be spending your hours writing the great American novel or you could be writing something that will only be read by your critique partners. No way of knowing. That’s when you stare at the ceiling and wonder, “Am I crazy for spending so much time doing this?”
The “Am I Crazies” are a natural result of writing a novel without having any idea whether the novel will find its way to publication, which is… you know, every novel by an unpublished author. This feeling can also be a pernicious, crippling force for some writers as they struggle with self-doubt and try to keep going without knowing what the future will bring.
So. How do you deal with the “Am I crazies” and keep yourself writing?
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Art: Edvard Munch – Melancholy
For a long time I was a closet writer.
Fantastic Topic!
When the crazies hit, I write crazy.
Whenever "Am I crazy" haunts me, the results are often spectacular.
Rather than resist it, or have doubts about writing, I step away from my novels (series) and write a poem, a short story, or add to one of my "crazy" novels.
These "side steppings" have grown into monster files on my computer giving me a life time of ideas to work with after my first novel is published.
I thought about giving up on writing a couple of times, but I get cold sweats just thinking about not writing. Plus, to delete the files would feel like pulling a life-support plug.
To some, life means having fun, getting, giving, going, and doing…but for me, life is writing and writing is my life (what is left of it).
All the comments to this blog makes me feel better about the insanity of writing. We may all be crazies, but we are not alone. (whew!)
bumper sticker on my car: Normal People Worry Me.
Lucinda
After posting above, I opened my daughter's email. I have to share.
"My pen knows what to do. I close my eyes and I see this girl who glows. A girl who radiates. When she smiles, she beams. She warms my heart. I open my eyes with a feeling of floating past all the garbage around me. I will emerge unscathed because I will not endeavor to hide myself from whatever is coming. Bring on the worst. I welcome it with open arms." –Henry Rollins
I think it's just the price you pay. Whether you're philosophical about it or not, you can't be a writer and not feel like you're completely out of your mind for sitting at a computer for hours, days and months rather than doing something constructive like building a bomb.
I visit this blog, which is sort of a virtual cafe for writers busy not writing just at this particular moment.
Then I imagine my work is being enjoyed and popularized by the inhabitants of Trafalmadore, who have us all locked in this insane, Vonnegut-monkeyhouse of the soul…
Yay, I'm not the only one being driven mad.
Forget arthritis…
This is AUTHORITIS!
remember the words of Steve Jobs–
the biggest mistake people make is thinking that they have something to lose.
The support of family and friends, plus a contractual gun pointed at my head. And a well-spring of eternal optimism.
For a recap of this thread, and laugh to help fight the "Am I Crazies," check out my new blogpost "You May Be A Bestselling Author on Tralfamadore" https://annerallen.blogspot.com/
Onipar said: "Initially, I found a critique group and asked them, straight up, 'Am I any good?'"
Oh my, I find that the fastest way to trigger the Am-I-Crazies! "Good" is such a relative term, and judging oneself by it can be destructive.
There's "good" meaning competent or excellent writing and storytelling; and "good" meaning sellable. But both depend on who's reading the work. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, good is in the eye of the agent, editor, and/or reader.
We all know about the thousands of good books that never see print, along with their counterparts — the crummy books that get published. And any novelist who has tried to get published knows that success boils down to getting the right work on the right person's desk on the right day.
Likewise, many agents have stated that they see and turn down many good books because they don't meet specific criteria for the agent or the marketplace. Are those books therefore less good?
Critique groups can be the worst judgers of what's good, if only because they often provide multiple, and conflicting, opinions. They are valuable for helping a writer focus and polish the work, and for providing encouragement; however, I've experienced more than one case when the same support and encouragement actually undercut the writer or pushed him/her in the wrong direction for the work.
Stephen King had the right idea: Show your work to 10 people. If 7 of them agree on any given problem, then you should pay attention and address it. Opinions by smaller numbers, or a smaller percentage of a group, tend to be just opinions. If you keep listening to them for too long, you can go nutty and sabotage your own best work.
It helps to know that you feel our pain!
Why can't there be a clearly defined path to publication? Getting published has an element of the lottery about it, imo.
Oh, I just go on and admit I'm crazy, then try to prove myself wrong.
Get through the rough draft and fall in love with your book. It's a lot easier to accept you spent so much time on it if you love it, regardless of if it is the next best American novel or not. And it means someone else might just love it, too.
I go to the book store and imagine my book on the shelve.
That's easy. I figure anyone has to be crazy to spend this much time in front of a keyboard, playing with imaginary friends.
But does it matter? I guess I'm lucky because I was never in it for the money. If it works out and a brilliant agent somewhere (I'm still thinking it might be you … heh heh) decides my story is going to be the next big thing, well, far be it from me to argue.
I love to write. If I don't write, that's when I really feel as if I've got the crazies.
I read this post, when it was first posted, at a time that I was asking myself if I should put my time into something that generates better results. I was asking myself if I was crazy and wasting my time and energy on writing. Not that the rejections bothered me, but I don’t like wasting time. But now, at this time, I have an answer, a very certain one for myself, so I want to share it here.
I am an engineer. About four years ago, I took some years off to raise my children. I have always liked writing as far as I remember, but never really got to it, except for a private poetry collection and my technical publications. About a year ago, I realized I so very much liked writing stories; I was with children, so I had many ideas for them. When I was plotting and writing, time went by so fast. I always looked forward to doing that. The stories got rejected; I started studying books, reading blogs, meeting writers, learning. It was all great, but I still didn’t feel like what I wrote was anything close to excellent, and so didn’t the publishers and agents.
Then one time, when I was watching a science-fiction movie, I realized that I have written sci-fi stories in my mind, all my life. Every day, that has been my happy place to go. I had a whole world built up in my mind, characters, concepts, sequences, since I was twelve years old. I had in my mind, the sci-fi stories that I wanted to read.
It took a while for me to organize my thoughts, but then it was a matter of a day to put the steps of the first story together, and then write. I wrote the whole thing in one sitting. Many times I told myself to get up and do the rest of it later, but I just couldn’t wait to write the next sentence. It was like writing my own memories! I have read it, and its sequel that I wrote in another one time sitting till 2 am, many times. It is funny, but I wake up in the morning to read them again, and again. They are so tailored to my taste and feelings and philosophy that I may never enjoy another story as much. In writing children stories, I felt restricted, it was pleasurable but it did not feel as natural. In writing sci-fi short stories, everything seems to fall in place automatically. I feel no restriction; it feels as natural as me being myself.
And now back to the how to deal with am I crazies. It has completely lost its relevance, as the publishing has lost its relevance. Of course I did submit my stories to a magazine for publication and if I get rejected I’ll send it again somewhere else, because I’d love to bring the joy to some other people, who may share the same taste and philosophy. But the pleasure I get from writing these stories and from reading them a million times is so great that puts the whole thing among the reasons I feel I was born for.
When you consider some of the crap that gets published that someone else (obviously) thought was good, it's not just writers who are crazy, it's everyone in the industry.
So you might well be crazy, but someone else will be crazy enough to publish you.
I know this is an unpopular view among writers but I self publish and sell my under-edited works to my friends and family who all think I'm wonderful. They are happy to spend a few bucks to buy my book and I'm not making money but at least a few dozen people (all of whom I know irl) get to share my stories and characters with me. If I never find a real publisher at least my characters didn't die in silence.
I got the Am-I-Crazies just yesterday. I had gotten back in touch with an old acquaintance via Facebook, and I told him about having gotten really into creative writing as a hobby over the past year or two. He asked if I had anything published, which I do – one piece that is online. I sent him the link with the caveat that I wasn't very happy with it, and outlined briefly my reasons for thinking it wasn't great. He wrote back and said, "Alas, I agree with your self-assessment."
Yikes.
Then I went back and read another short piece of which I had been particularly proud, which I have been trying hard to place in some sort of literary magazine. I looked at it through his eyes and saw that this piece also was full of all kinds of problems, possibly unfixable problems, and that it might just be better to put it in a drawer and forget about it.
And then the am-I-crazies came – what if my current book-length project fails just as badly? This is a project that has been hard and a bit painful to get into … why am I doing this to myself? Is this writing compulsion unhealthy?
But I can't picture stopping. I feel like once I start a project, I can't stop, or I'd never finish anything. What it boils down to for me, I think, is the satisfaction I get from finishing something: To go from a void where there's not even an idea, to the idea fully worked out, to the idea realized in the form of words, to have the whole thing built and constructed and done, like having built a house where before there was just an empty patch of ground – that's something that drives me, regardless of what happens once the work is done.
I suspect there's something in human nature that just wants to build stuff, and writing is the form it takes for me. It'd be great to have money and recognition from it too, but the urge to build is primal and I doubt I could root it out even if I wanted to try. And I don't want to try – I'm just going with it.
denial helps. but mostly, i refer back to my sister's comment that by pursuing a writing career, i'll end up living in a cardboard box. she may not remember that, but it's bothered me, and inspired me, every day for about 7 or so years.
i also belong to an online writers' group, http://www.penwrights.com, where i get a lot of great feedback. they've helped tremendously.
I try to remember two things when this feeling manages to overcome the natural defense of focusing on the craft of writing.
One, when most people worry that they're terrible at something, they're right. I'm far more likely to be in that group than the one that is filled with humble genius. If the only reason I'm writing is some belief that I'm in that group of hidden genius, this isn't going to be a fulfilling career. Insecurity of that nature doesn't disappear with a publishing contract, and may in fact make it worse. At least now we have our secret dreams of being best selling authors. Once your work is out there, and it sells less than 1,000 copies…
Two, what else would I be doing? I want to tell a story, multiple stories. I want to grab people by their shoulders and shake them with the words that I write because of the story that is contained in them. I realized that requires getting published to reach a large audience, but I'm not so concerned about that right now. The world is changing, as so are the ways in which authors reach readers. If the quality of my work is sufficient, it will find its audience.
The best ammunition I have against drowning in the ocean of doubt that dominates the "big picture", is my concern for the quality of my writing. I spend a lot less time these days focusing on "the industry". It will be what it will be. I'll worry about that when I have a book I feel great about.
Maybe this will all sound like utter baloney when I have a finished book and I'm in the midst of deciding how to get it out there, but for now, it's what I have.
Forgive the typos if you would, I have a nasty habit of being distracted while writing comments like these and often hit "Publish" out of impatience. After all, I have a day job -and- writing to get back to. 😉
To be "crazy" in a world of all those who think they are "sane" is the biggest compliment of all.
Quite simply I don't deal with the "Am-I-Crazies?", I don't even question it.
Crazy should be embraced as a passionate lover.
I am crazies, that's how I do it. Nathan you raise some very good questions that's why I love your blog. It's self doubt which causes procrastination. Your muse says you are not worthy, but you have to believe you are worth and beat your muse into submission.
I don't know who said it first, but "Normal's just a setting on a washing machine." And who wants to be normal anyway? When the "Am-I-Crazies" attack, I think of all the time and heart I've put into my writing. Giving up seems foolish to me. Why decide on a no when it could be a yes?
Create drive! I never stop thinking about that next great idea. It's not just my writing, anything creative pulls me along. I do dream of the end result but it is the process I love!
I believe in my story. I have fallen in love with my characters, and I want to introduce them to the world. While I highly doubt I will be the next big thing, I have faith in the novel that just happened to choose me as it's author. I just pray I will do it justice.
I love writing. I won't ever stop.
If that's crazy, so be it. I also believe that my books will be published. Maybe that's even crazier!
I have a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt that keeps me going…
"You must do the thing in which you think you cannot do." Love it.
Finally admitted that yes, I am crazy to take on this isolating profession that may or may not work out and in the meantime makes me look like a wee bit of a loser. Crazy? Of course I am.
I write because the voices tell me to. Does that make me crazy? If so, I guess I have come to terms with it. Whether my work gets published or not doesn't really matter–the voices won't let me rest until they have had their say.
That said my husband, god bless him, doesn't think I am crazy. And I suppose that helps.