A friend of mine - when visiting Canada - took his Australian wife skiing. Her first time - not a lot of snow in her part of Oz. She came out of it unscathed. He fell on the bunny slopes and broke the head off his femur. Sometimes confidence can be misplaced. On the other hand, accidents happen, even to the most competent, confident people, and there's no blame, no inadequacy, involved.
I was not a confident teen, but on leaving home for college took myself by the scruff of the neck and gave myself the 'we're all equal' talk, and the 'even the Queen needs to go to the toilet' talk. For a while I faked it and then gradually realised that the faking it had become so much a part of me that I wasn't really faking it any more. Maybe that was helped because a) all girls' school and b) library school course with 50 girls and 5 men. Maybe if I'd been in a male-centric profession it might have been different, I don't know. And for the last 30 years I've been self-employed, not always with complete success, but I'm still here, still self-employed, not starving yet, and that's what counts.
I have been so very lucky that I've never been in the position of feeling that women deserve less than men, or that they should apologise for existing, or doing or wanting. There are many things I can't do (ski, for one), but there's nothing that I want to do that I feel as though I couldn't do given the time to learn. (Well, okay, maybe skiing. I have a lousy sense of balance, but honestly, it's not on my top ten list of ambitions anyway.)
There have been challenges on the way, none more so that when I had to face down someone who was mistreating a bunch of other people (you know the incident, I mean, Kari). I had the choice of walking away or drawing a line in the sand. Until the moment it happened I didn't think I had that kind of nerve, but I discovered I had.
Translate personal confidence to writing confidence and... well... it doesn't always translate. You can't really fake it. For many years I wouldn't let anyone see what I wrote. That's no bad thing because, frankly, a lot of it was not fit to be released into the wild. Then by a very odd connection (through music) I got the opportunity to write a short story for an anthology, which to my intense surprise, was accepted.
That gave me my first qualifying sale for Milford and that's when it all took off for me. Milford has been good for my confidence, not because I suddenly think I'm a good writer (though I am always aiming to improve), but because on my first visit, even though the piece I took had so many things wrong with it, no one pointed and jeered.
We're all in search of the words to write the perfect book, but perfection is an impossibility. I could write the perfect paragraph today and tomorrow I would hate it. My writing is workmanlike. Luckily someone else with far more experience than me thinks it's good enough to publish, so who am I to argue?
You, my dear K, are not perfect. Welcome to the club. There are 7.2 billion of us living on this rock. It doesn't matter. Let me say that again… IT DOESN'T MATTER! Why? Because you have so much more going for you than perfection. I can't vouch for your skiing. The very fact that you dare strap on a pair of skis is proof itself that you have courage. Writing-wise, I aspire to be as good as you. Your prose is elegant, your characters complex, your worlds rich and detailed, your stories intricately plotted. In the words of the poet: your writing is FECKIN' FANTASTIC!
I'm currently at the stage of not knowing whether the book I have to deliver in two weeks is a) finished and b) good enough. I'm so close to it that I can no longer judge it. It's been content edited (thanks, Sheila). I've made changes (some of them quite major ones) and I've done two passes to smooth out the prose. I could probably use another couple of passes through, polishing a little more each time, but there comes a point when you make changes for the sake of it, when changes are just changes, not improvements. Is it the perfect book? No way.
Surely if any of us write the perfect book we'll have to retire, because how could we ever follow it?
no subject
I was not a confident teen, but on leaving home for college took myself by the scruff of the neck and gave myself the 'we're all equal' talk, and the 'even the Queen needs to go to the toilet' talk. For a while I faked it and then gradually realised that the faking it had become so much a part of me that I wasn't really faking it any more. Maybe that was helped because a) all girls' school and b) library school course with 50 girls and 5 men. Maybe if I'd been in a male-centric profession it might have been different, I don't know. And for the last 30 years I've been self-employed, not always with complete success, but I'm still here, still self-employed, not starving yet, and that's what counts.
I have been so very lucky that I've never been in the position of feeling that women deserve less than men, or that they should apologise for existing, or doing or wanting. There are many things I can't do (ski, for one), but there's nothing that I want to do that I feel as though I couldn't do given the time to learn. (Well, okay, maybe skiing. I have a lousy sense of balance, but honestly, it's not on my top ten list of ambitions anyway.)
There have been challenges on the way, none more so that when I had to face down someone who was mistreating a bunch of other people (you know the incident, I mean, Kari). I had the choice of walking away or drawing a line in the sand. Until the moment it happened I didn't think I had that kind of nerve, but I discovered I had.
Translate personal confidence to writing confidence and... well... it doesn't always translate. You can't really fake it. For many years I wouldn't let anyone see what I wrote. That's no bad thing because, frankly, a lot of it was not fit to be released into the wild. Then by a very odd connection (through music) I got the opportunity to write a short story for an anthology, which to my intense surprise, was accepted.
That gave me my first qualifying sale for Milford and that's when it all took off for me. Milford has been good for my confidence, not because I suddenly think I'm a good writer (though I am always aiming to improve), but because on my first visit, even though the piece I took had so many things wrong with it, no one pointed and jeered.
We're all in search of the words to write the perfect book, but perfection is an impossibility. I could write the perfect paragraph today and tomorrow I would hate it. My writing is workmanlike. Luckily someone else with far more experience than me thinks it's good enough to publish, so who am I to argue?
You, my dear K, are not perfect. Welcome to the club. There are 7.2 billion of us living on this rock. It doesn't matter. Let me say that again… IT DOESN'T MATTER! Why? Because you have so much more going for you than perfection. I can't vouch for your skiing. The very fact that you dare strap on a pair of skis is proof itself that you have courage. Writing-wise, I aspire to be as good as you. Your prose is elegant, your characters complex, your worlds rich and detailed, your stories intricately plotted. In the words of the poet: your writing is FECKIN' FANTASTIC!
I'm currently at the stage of not knowing whether the book I have to deliver in two weeks is a) finished and b) good enough. I'm so close to it that I can no longer judge it. It's been content edited (thanks, Sheila). I've made changes (some of them quite major ones) and I've done two passes to smooth out the prose. I could probably use another couple of passes through, polishing a little more each time, but there comes a point when you make changes for the sake of it, when changes are just changes, not improvements. Is it the perfect book? No way.
Surely if any of us write the perfect book we'll have to retire, because how could we ever follow it?
Hang in there, Kari. You are worth it.