One of the main reasons that I hesitate to write stories is that when I go back and read them, I find something awkward, embarrassing, or unnaturally exposed in my presentation of the story. I’ve tried to get around this by ignoring it, avoiding writing altogether, or sticking to subjects that seem immune to this type of discomfort. Recently, in a fit of blind self-confidence, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at one of these mortifying examples of flailing effort to see what exactly is causing this sense of humiliation.
What I found in the story in question was that I don’t have a graceful way of handling characters’ inner lives: their motivations, emotions, and impressions. In this area more than any other, I feel like I reveal my own prejudices, conceits, and ignorance… all the things I’d like to pretend don’t exist. It’s in these passages that I think I tell the reader more about myself than about my characters, and that, frankly undermines my whole purpose in writing fiction. So it seems necessary to find a new way of working with this type of material. If you leave it out, you run the risk of flattening your stories into skeletal plot outlines. If you overdo it, or do it clumsily, you wind up with an overwrought character portrait(of the artist).
And this brings me to my question of the day: does this happen to you? And how do you work it out? I think that everyone runs into some point of vulnerability (often many, many points of vulnerability) in their efforts to create. How do you address them in general, and how do you work out specific sticky points? Talk to Meg, or Carly, or Illy!
x-ing and o-ing ~i
