There was a time where I shared everything that I wrote and I loved everything because I wrote it. That time is long behind me and I've almost completely lost touch with that feeling. I wish I had the courage and confidence to share everything that I wrote instead of being terrified that people will use my work to judge me, hate me, and ultimately persecute me. That is the thing that keeps me back. It is what destroys my love of the craft. Why do we spend so much time judging each other when we could've spent that time celebrating each other? What do we get out of this?
Seriously? Is this really all about pushing ourselves up by comparison or is there something more to it? Writing feels like such an unvalidating pursuit. I feel no pride for anything I do. I have no clue if I am capable of writing anything of quality and I have been doing this for over twenty years! I can't help but feel like our desperate need to critique the craft is in part to give ourselves some small metric of success.
And YET...Even though I feel this way and would love to just say all craft is subjective and therefore beyond critique, I do notice excellence. I notice when a piece has strong voice, great pacing, or vision of character. There are definitive moments in my life where I read something and think, "This is beautiful!" True that those moments are few and far between, but that's part of what true beauty is! Beauty is rare. It is a collection of convergeances and iteration that have made something chaotic and meaningless transcend it's design.
What are the things we think of as being intrinsically beautiful? A sunset. Something that is created from water vapor, rotation, gravity, and the refraction of light. These are all physical concepts that shouldn't be creating things humans are still impressed with, and yet we are.
Writing has the potential to bring that out us. It brings it out of myself, even as I'm writing it. I want an audience to share that feeling.
