Artists come in all shapes and sizes. Some paint, some create music, others bring out the statues held captive by blocks of stone and still others start with blank pages to create new worlds and memorable characters. But regardless of the art involved, all artists need to face an unfortunate and ugly truth.

Not everything an artist creates is going to be good. In fact, a lot of it will struggle to merely be mediocre.

It isn’t an easy thing to admit to oneself. I know of some people who perform and create without any real talent or passion, and the lack of commitment shows. Not only are such charlatans unwilling to practice or improve, they’re all but immune to criticism. To even intimate that they are performing at a less than exceptional level is tantamount to blasphemy in their minds. They’ll never, ever look at their work from a point of view outside of their own and realize the flaws in it, be they minute or monstrous. To be honest, I feel sorrier for them than I do the other extreme.

We are our own worst critics, and there are those who focus on their flaws and shortcomings entirely too much. All they see in their art is the mistakes they make. They don’t see the forest, or even necessarily the trees, just a tiny bit of bird crap on a single leaf; next thing you know they’re burning the forest down because “it’s all shit.” They may have talent and passion, and they might be aware of how practice would improve their art, but they lack the motivation because of how they see everything they create. It’s a difficult obstacle to overcome.

To be successful, I feel an artist should be somewhere in the middle. Hold on to what you do that’s good, and work your way past the rest. Know in your heart and your mind that you do good work, but don’t boast about it even when people tell you how good it is. Find the right balance between ego and humility.

And know that stuff you do may very well suck.

I’ve heard it said that every artist has 10,000 bad drawings in them; you just have to get past those. I’d venture to say most writers have at least ten times that many bad words they need to write before things start getting good. And even then, it might not get you anywhere. Remember that metaphor for getting a novel finished, the one where you put a bucket on your head and slam it against a brick wall until either you or the wall fall over? Some writers go through multiple buckets because they’re just that stubborn. I think I’m on my third.

The important thing is not to give up. Know some stuff you write will suck. Accept that, and write through it. Pull out the old Lucas-flavored line of “I’ll fix it in post.” Write the stuff that sucks, then peel away the sucky stuff until all that’s left is good stuff.

And if you can’t kick your ass into gear to do it, find someone else to do it for you.

I’ll kick your ass, friends, if you kick mine.

I hear the hammers. Chisels sound like they’re working rocks over. It’s the sound of Chuck Wendig chipping away at the preconceptions and sorry excuses that cake around the thick skull of the writer especially after a binge of wordsmithing like NaNoWriMo. He gave me a gift on my birthday, the gift of cold wisdom, of reminding me just how badly I could fuck this up.

I do like his advice on building up savings (and the liquor cabinet) while the day job is going on, but I should still be cramming more writing in whenever I can. Stealing it out of the piggy bank of Father Time while he’s out mowing the temporal lawn. Digging my fingers into the mud of my schedule and scooping out what bits of time I can to slap it onto this writing thing and see if it’ll finally stick.

Wait, am I sure that’s mud? Probably. Maybe. Smells funny, though.

Anyway, even if I did have or make more time, I’m unsure as to how I’d spend it, writing-wise.

I’m having doubts about the major novel rewrite. I’m debating taking the other novel in a different direction (down instead of up, novella serial instead of novel series, e-pub versus traditional) and my shorts are in the hands of editors who are pretty busy themselves. While I do have some other work lined up, the big things that I’ve long taken to be the solid core of where I want to go with this whole writing thing have lately come up as giant question marks.

Are these things worth pursuing, continuing, writing? Would I be better off sticking them in a folder somewhere and starting completely from scratch?

I guess this is the ‘wall’ runners often speak of. I’m getting that ‘seperates the men from the boys’ feeling. And I know it could be erroneous. So I’m going to keep trying to find and make the time to chip away at these things, one word and sentence at a time. Problem is, at the moment, I can’t help but feel a little adrift.

I’ve mentioned in medias res previously. It’s a great way to get your audience into the swing of the story and can cut down on overwrought exposition. However, no matter how breakneck the pace of the opening, you don’t necessarily have to pound the metaphorical pavement from start to finish. You can’t spend all of your creative energy right up front.

You have to pace yourself.

Stage performers from illusionists to strippers know you can’t show the audience everything right away, and writing fiction is no different. Even in the shortest of stories, you can’t pull back the curtain right away. It’s a gradual work of unseen pulleys and ropes, not something yanked down before the audience’s eyes. Be your story a hundred words long or a hundred thousand, be sure to give yourself time to move your scenery, get your actors on their marks, and line up your shots before you pull the trigger.

This is especially true for stories broken up over time, be they serials or webcomics or a number of novels. Look at A Song of Ice and Fire, or Dresden Files, or Harry Potter, or Homestuck. In each case, recurring characters and permeating themes maintain or develop the world and atmosphere between ‘episodes’ in the story, allowing the audience to try and fill in the blanks themselves. Canny authors can leave clues or even red herrings for people to pick up and put together themselves, maintaining the feeling of discovery and anticipation even if it’s an unreasonable stretch of time between new entries in the story.

Authors must take care, however, that this sort of thing is not merely a carrot dangled in front of the audience to lure them towards some sort of soapboxing moment. It weakens the quality of the narrative itself. Smart writers can play with, lean on and even occasionally break the fourth wall, but such things must be done with a delicate touch lest the power of the story’s messages get plowed under by the author’s drive to make a point. It’s one thing to have the writer slip a wink to the audience or chase down a troublemaking character with a broom in a moment of light humor; it’s quite another when the characters become mouthpieces for the author’s political or religious viewpoints, especially when the audience is young and impressionable. Characters speaking on courage, perseverance or self-sacrifice for the good of their friends is one thing; characters moralizing on abstinence or abortion is quite another.

Even in these worst-case scenarios, however, you can see the evidence of good pacing amongst the fandom of a given title. There’s speculation, anticipation, even fans crafting their own works to fill in the gaps. True, some will try to impose themselves on the author for answers or to influence turns in the story to come, but even this behavior’s a good sign. It means the audience cares about the characters and the world in which they live. While you can’t leave them hanging forever, if you get the pace right (and don’t digress into soapboxing) they’ll happily admit the reveal was worth the wait, even if it wasn’t what they expected.

So find a good rhythm, set the pace, and don’t get tripped up or ahead of yourself. Short stories may be sprints, and novels & novel series a marathon, but in all cases you have to pace yourself. If you do it properly, you’ll have just enough energy to cheer after you cross the finish line before you collapse into an exhausted heap.