It's time for another blog chain, and this time I am at the end of the chain. If you want to follow it from the beginning start here with Archetype. Or if you want to read in reverse order you can find the blog preceding mine at Mary Lindsey's Weblog.
So this month's question is:
Some people argue that creative people need “angst” to produce good work. Do you? What emotions drive you as a writer?
My answer to the first question is easy. No, no, no, no - a thousand times no. Angst is what stands between me and my work - whether it be good or bad.
For me, angst is the chatter inside my brain that drowns out my story and makes me decide to sit in front of the TV instead of the computer. Or at other times when I decide to push past the angst and just write, damn it - then the angst is more like having the car covered with a pile of snow that needs to be brushed off, or in some cases maybe even chipped off , like when a nice layer of freezing rain covers it, and then maybe the locks are frozen too - this used to happen to the car I drove when I was in high school, and my mother's solution was to throw a mug of hot water at the lock, which got me in the car, but during the drive to school the lock would refreeze, which meant that I would have to crawl into the passenger seat and then kick the door to get myself out of the car. Sometimes, getting past the angst so I can write feels just like this.
So, to answer the second part of the question - if it's not angst that is driving me, then what emotion is? My answer here is a little less certain, because honestly I don't really feel emotional at all when I'm writing. At the point where I am writing and in the story, I feel more analytical than anything else. I don't laugh at my own jokes, cry when I hurt my heroine, and shake my fist when the villain gets away with something terrible. And while I am thinking about what emotions my characters are experiencing, I am not going through them myself.
If anything the emotion that drives me to write is ambition. The ambition to tell my story the best way possible and in a way that rings true.
Archetype began this question and she will wrap it up too over at Archetype Writing. The next question will start in a few days with Michelle McLean over at Writer Ramblings.
So this month's question is:
Some people argue that creative people need “angst” to produce good work. Do you? What emotions drive you as a writer?
My answer to the first question is easy. No, no, no, no - a thousand times no. Angst is what stands between me and my work - whether it be good or bad.
For me, angst is the chatter inside my brain that drowns out my story and makes me decide to sit in front of the TV instead of the computer. Or at other times when I decide to push past the angst and just write, damn it - then the angst is more like having the car covered with a pile of snow that needs to be brushed off, or in some cases maybe even chipped off , like when a nice layer of freezing rain covers it, and then maybe the locks are frozen too - this used to happen to the car I drove when I was in high school, and my mother's solution was to throw a mug of hot water at the lock, which got me in the car, but during the drive to school the lock would refreeze, which meant that I would have to crawl into the passenger seat and then kick the door to get myself out of the car. Sometimes, getting past the angst so I can write feels just like this.
So, to answer the second part of the question - if it's not angst that is driving me, then what emotion is? My answer here is a little less certain, because honestly I don't really feel emotional at all when I'm writing. At the point where I am writing and in the story, I feel more analytical than anything else. I don't laugh at my own jokes, cry when I hurt my heroine, and shake my fist when the villain gets away with something terrible. And while I am thinking about what emotions my characters are experiencing, I am not going through them myself.
If anything the emotion that drives me to write is ambition. The ambition to tell my story the best way possible and in a way that rings true.
Archetype began this question and she will wrap it up too over at Archetype Writing. The next question will start in a few days with Michelle McLean over at Writer Ramblings.
