Permission to Suck: Granted
I was tooling around Facebook and happened upon a shared blog post that really resonated with me.
It's the blog of Jeff Salyards about a time he took his two-year-old daughter to the Renn Faire. She was enchanted by the fairies.
As anyone who's gone to a Ren Faire knows, the fairies are all animation and facial expressions. They don't speak. I, too, have been enchanted by none other than Twig the Fairy. She reached into a velvet bag and pulled out a stone and dropped it into my palm along with a good sprinkling of glitter. I still have that stone.
I believe it is, as my Twinkie says, my three year old sense of humor (which can also translate to imagination I'm sure).
Anyway, tangent... memories... sigh...
Jeff goes on to write about imagination and writing and all that and this one particular line resonated me on a level I can't even describe:
Permission to suck? I can do that. When I'm stuck and need to "just get through this scene so I can move on" permission to suck would get me through it.
Now, as a lot of you know, I have participated in NaNoWriMo for nine years. This year will be my tenth and possibly final year participating. I have all the shirts and I plan to make a quilt or something out of them. NaNoWriMo for me is one big fat suck fest. Everything I write is horrible but I don't care because the goal for NaNoWriMo is quantity, not quality. There are a few gems in there, I'm sure, but the rest is complete and utter suckage.
I just wanted to take note of this wonderful thing. Permission to suck. Have at it. Write -ly adverbs all you want. Have people's actions denote how they say something (such as, "holy crap," Ben exploded). Permission to suck gets the words on the page. In the words of some writer out there, "you can't edit a blank page." (I swore it was someone great from long ago, but the interwebs say it was Jodi Picoult...)
___________________________________________________
How about you? Do you ever give yourself permission to suck?
___________________________________________________
Peace and Keep Writing,
Claire L. Fishback
It's the blog of Jeff Salyards about a time he took his two-year-old daughter to the Renn Faire. She was enchanted by the fairies.
As anyone who's gone to a Ren Faire knows, the fairies are all animation and facial expressions. They don't speak. I, too, have been enchanted by none other than Twig the Fairy. She reached into a velvet bag and pulled out a stone and dropped it into my palm along with a good sprinkling of glitter. I still have that stone.
I believe it is, as my Twinkie says, my three year old sense of humor (which can also translate to imagination I'm sure).
Anyway, tangent... memories... sigh...
Jeff goes on to write about imagination and writing and all that and this one particular line resonated me on a level I can't even describe:
I just have to give myself permission to suck and keep on keeping on so I can at least get something on the page to work with.
Permission to suck? I can do that. When I'm stuck and need to "just get through this scene so I can move on" permission to suck would get me through it.
Now, as a lot of you know, I have participated in NaNoWriMo for nine years. This year will be my tenth and possibly final year participating. I have all the shirts and I plan to make a quilt or something out of them. NaNoWriMo for me is one big fat suck fest. Everything I write is horrible but I don't care because the goal for NaNoWriMo is quantity, not quality. There are a few gems in there, I'm sure, but the rest is complete and utter suckage.
I just wanted to take note of this wonderful thing. Permission to suck. Have at it. Write -ly adverbs all you want. Have people's actions denote how they say something (such as, "holy crap," Ben exploded). Permission to suck gets the words on the page. In the words of some writer out there, "you can't edit a blank page." (I swore it was someone great from long ago, but the interwebs say it was Jodi Picoult...)
___________________________________________________
How about you? Do you ever give yourself permission to suck?
___________________________________________________
Peace and Keep Writing,
Claire L. Fishback
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