Ian Pierce

Tag: brain shit

  • finished with my woman cause she couldn’t help me with my mind

    I got some criticism from a reader recently that I’m having trouble getting out of my head. I don’t need to go into the details about who the reader was or what the criticism is. It’s just something that stuck in my head, making me question a lot of things about my writing. And even if I’ve talked with other beta readers who’ve told me, some in emphatic terms, that they disagreed with this reader’s particular analysis, it was still something that I’m hyperfixating on, probably to the detriment of my work.

    I know I shouldn’t do this. I don’t know why I put the opinions of someone who doesn’t like my work over the opinions of people who do. I wish that I could kick this paranoia, but it’s hard. If I get too in my head, however, I try to take the advice of this old Dan Shive comic:

    It’s a good idea in theory, but at the same time, hard to put into practice. Having a moderate anxiety disorder means that my paranoia can take over everything I do and lead me to question everything. Of course, I make up for the anxiety with bouts of self-loathing depression. Such is the life of a writer, I suppose.

    Yesterday, I got so pissed off at a novel in progress that I decided to completely change the antagonist and the main character’s backstory. This, of course, is not a small change, and it’s frustrating. If revising a novel is like renovating a house, then I expected to patch some holes in the drywall and repair some faulty plumbing, and instead I have to tear the house down to the foundation and replace the entire roof. This work in progress is one of my favorite things I’ve done, and I love writing scenes with the characters, but ultimately I estimate that I’ll have to completely rewrite about 40% of the book, not to mention revising most of the existing scenes to make it so that everything is consistent.

    I should trust in myself, I know. I’m a good writer, and I’ve had multiple publishing professionals tell me that. I can fix what’s wrong with the story. At the same time, though, I’m angry at myself – even though first drafts aren’t supposed to be perfect, even if the road to a finished product is never easy. Even if the twists and turns I’ve taken on this story have been like pulling teeth.

    Speaking of pulling teeth, I’m going to the dentist tomorrow to get most of the teeth on the upper left side of my mouth fixed. This involves multiple crowns, fillings, possibly root canals – and even that may not solve everything. So my generalized anxiety right now is understandable, I suppose. I’ve learned that autistic people tend to mask when we’re in discomfort or pain, because so often our discomfort is dismissed or minimized. This leads to minor medical problems eventually becoming severe, costing thousands of dollars. At least I have insurance now from my new job, so the bill will be in the three figures rather than the four or five.

    This has been a bit of a bummer of a blog post, I guess, so I’ll finish it with a drawing I did several years ago. It’s the main character of a very long, complicated writing project that I hope to complete one day. Her name is Sophie. I’m excited for you to know her story.

    ~ Ian (listening to Pogo Rodeo by Psychedelic Porn Crumpets)

  • i take a whisky drink, i take a lager drink

    I’m trying to get back into the swing of blogging, now that I have a website again. It’s been something like ten years since I’ve done anything approaching a blog, and those ten years have been filled with a lot of things: moving to Seattle, starting and ending a podcast, getting a house with a friend (which subsequently led to the end of that friendship, but that’s a story for another time), teaching English in Madrid, writing and sending out thousands and thousands of pages of fiction, not to mention world events like the pandemic, war in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza, and the creeping spread of fascism in the United States… A lot of history can happen in ten years. Besides, even in the last few days, a lot has gone on with me personally. I started a new job, and literally one day later, I broke a tooth and ended up needing several emergency dentist visits. Needless to say, things have been stressful lately.

    When I was in college, from about 2012 to 2015, I had a blog. I was a kid then, and yet I thought that what I had to say to the world was so meaningful and profound. When you’re a teenager, there’s a weird combination of arrogance and doubt intertwined in your personality. Your thought process goes something like “Yes, the world sucks and everything is scary, but I’m awesome so I’ll be fine.” The thing is, the arrogance runs out faster than the doubt. For me, that arrogance was depleted by about 2014, when I had a moderate nervous breakdown that delayed my graduating and led to a period of time when I was sort of a hermit, living at my parents’ house and sleeping all day so I didn’t have to interact with people any more than was absolutely necessary. If it weren’t for the fact that I love going to coffee shops for caffeine and snacks, I might not have left the house at all. 

    I got out of that state after a few years of angst, medication, and meeting with a shitty therapist. That doubt was still there, however. I didn’t blog for a lot of reasons, mostly because I felt like I’d be some kind of imposter if I did. Maybe when I’m published, I thought, people will take me seriously. I guess the reason I waited was because I didn’t take myself seriously. I craved external validation, and only when I got that would I give myself permission to actually make a website. 

    Really, I had a classic case of Dunning-Kruger syndrome. The less you know about a topic, the more you overestimate your own skills. When I was in college, I thought I was shit hot, that I was only a few months, or even weeks, before I broke through the publication ranks and became the award-winning, bestselling author that I knew was my destiny. A decade and hundreds of rejections dissuaded me from that notion. Instead of being a transcendent literary genius, I was just another kid with big dreams, writing checks with his mouth that his ass couldn’t cash. 

    Maybe that’s a sign of how much I’ve progressed in my writing skills. The fact that I have so much doubt about whether I’m any good or not – whether there even is such a thing as good writing – means that I’ve actually hugely improved over the past decade and a bit. I have to tell myself this: that hubris is the worst thing for any creator. Once you think you’re untouchable, that’s the moment you’re ripe for a fall. 

    Still, beneath all that doubt, there’s a sliver of arrogance left in me. Maybe the ratio of doubt to arrogance is about 90/10. Maybe it’s even 95/5. Still, as long as there’s that remnant of arrogance left – combined with its cousin, sheer bloody-minded determination – I’ll keep going. As famed anarcho-punks Chumbawamba said, “I get knocked down, but I get up again.” Maybe a little arrogance isn’t entirely a bad thing.