I'm guilty of a terrible writing sin & I know you are too. A sin that displays with ugly clarity, the egotistical & self serving nature of writing. Of, dare I say it, being 'a writer'? This sin does not result in the torture of fire and brimstone, but something oh-so-much worse. Because this sin is an amalgamation of all the others.
- It is the lust for a quick fix and the self indulgence of writing not for craft but solely to self soothe.
- It is gluttony and greed. A greed that steals from itself, that wants to claim every character as its own.
- It is sloth because it is lazy writing and makes the composer predictable.
- It is wrath because it is the inability to go beyond personal pain and gut reactions, to develop prose.
- It is an envy of the self's creation and the resulting perversion of it.
- And it is pride because it;s the self (and not the quality of the text) as most central to the final product of the writing process.
Time and time again as an undergrad I spoke with peers, tutors and (OK, mainly) myself about this problem. And yes, it is a problem. If you allow every one of your central characters to be you (but in a desolate future world, but a recent recruit to the Tamil Tigers, but younger and Hungarian and about to beat some serious Stalin out of János Kádár) you are writing the same story! Your drive to write is a gift (not the scary Carrie kind) and you can use it to write the same story over and over (and bore me, your readers, your Nan and your tutors). Or, if you prefer, you can use it to explore everything, you can position yourself at the forefront of human thinking, consciousness and development. Be a renegade. How? Well, you'll find out when I publish the sequel, won't you?
Stay militant.
