CrazyJohn: On Writing III
Stephan King, at one point, talks about a principle he had who confronted him one day about the content of a story he had been selling to kids in his school. She said to him, about the story in question "Why would you want to waste your abilities?" He then said something that astonished me. He said he was ashamed... and feels he spent far too much time feeling ashamed of his writing in his life. I mean, here's Stephan KING talking about being ashamed of his writing. I was FLOORED.
Then he said something about lots of fiction writers being made to feel ashamed about "wasting their talents." So I thought about it for a second... had anyone ever made me feel ashamed? For the most part, no... I've had a pretty supportive net surrounding me. And then *FLASH* I'm in college in my creative writing class. I've just turned in a story which carried a lot of meaning to me personally about a boy locked in a bathroom who has conversations with his mother and older brother and who eventually breaks the bathroom mirror because he can't stand looking at himself. He hates the reflection. This story was personal. When we talked about it in class, everyone seemed to really enjoy the dialogue... saying it seemed very natural and honest, etc. Then the professor chimed in. The dialogue was trite, he argued, and the characters completely unbelievable. I had based the mother, in particular, on my own mother... even stealing some phrases that she has said or would say. He argued that the mother (in particular) was unreal, uninteresting, a stock/trite character. Instead of sticking up for myself or saying "She's my mother and that's the way she really is"... I sat there and felt ashamed. My dialogue... the golden ticket of my writing... had failed me, and produced something unoriginal and unbelievable (that's unbelievable in a bad way).