It especially works well with writing a feature screenplay. Every time you think “is this just crap?” Or “does this scene work at all?” To keep going you have to say to yourself “well it’s not half as bad as all those really awful movies that actually got made.”
After writing my erotic romance Novella, but before the final edit, I read several romance novels/novellas.
I found a good many poor edits, non-sequiturs, grammatical errors and plot problems and, oddly, this made me feel better about the work that I was doing…
(this is legitimate advice, i can assure you nothing stops the mediocre cishet white boy when he thinks he's hot shit and no matter what, you're undoubtedly better and more thoughtful than he'll ever be)
I regularly indulge in infuriatingly bad but success art to fill up the ol’ spite bucket, which I sip from liberally while I create to drown out the impostor syndrome
Never forget E. L. James is a published author that made fucking bank from book sales & movie deals and sequels out the ass, and no matter how hard you try, nothing you write can ever be worse than 50 shades. You will never put pen to paper and churn out “in my groggy frame of mind, he looks yummy.”
When I say it in this same context, I just remember a lot of the terrible poetry that gets a lot of marketing and sales and think, "I can't do any worse than that." As you can tell, I have a bit of an ego problem.
I cling to the feeling I get when I DNF a book because it's sooo bad, and then remember that somehow, someone saw fit to actually publish that drivel. Naming no names.
What’s funny for me is when I sit down and have no clue what should happen I tend to find my best moments. I had a chapter in my second book that I thought about for weeks trying to find the right way to present it. In the moment I sat down I went a completely different direction…
And decided to write it from a completely different characters perspective and it not only worked better it became a keystone moment of the narrative I didn’t anticipate!
lol. I’ve had a few chapters that felt like. Just get to the end then make it good later. Sometimes you need to push past a moment you don’t feel like writing to get to the good parts. Sometimes those chapters end up being my favorite tho.
I found my self-loathing took a particular turn, 17k into what ended up being a 25k novella: I was just angry and disappointed that it wasn't done yet, and fuck if it wasn't my own fault for not getting it done faster, and FUCK that guy (me)
Just being called into a meeting with my id, ego, superego, et al and being told some very sobering news about me and what surely everyone around me thinks about this bullshit (me)
The snippets you post have made me go "damn I need to step up my game" if that helps any. I'm just some guy but I think you should feel free to upgrade to "this is good actually, that one internet weirdo said so."
That really does mean a lot! It's just that usual headspace I get to when working on something where suddenly I'm like "What if this is actually garbage and I have wasted all this time for nothing". Which, even if it IS garbage, the time wouldn't have been wasted! My brain is just being mean.
Yeah, I do get that. There's entire weeks or more when I get into on of my what's-even-the-point moods where literally nothing helps and so far the only way I've found to deal with it is to just write through it. It's happened before, it will happen again, such is life, on with it.
Comments
We have all read bad books, but you know, the good ones always stay with us. I look forward to reading yours.
I found a good many poor edits, non-sequiturs, grammatical errors and plot problems and, oddly, this made me feel better about the work that I was doing…
🤣