About Help Me Please

Post 1025:

Writing is a solitary endeavor. There’s no way around it. You need to be alone. A lot. You can bounce ideas off someone, but writing fiction is all about imagination and the page and your butt in the chair pounding on the keys until something decent materializes. It can be daunting and lonely, but once you accomplish something like a full story or novel there’s a sense that can come over you, that going it alone is in fact the only way to go.

I mean, there was nothing and now there’s something. All by your lonesome, you made that happen.

But then what? Because editors, artists, printers, publishers, agents—these people are part of the game, too. And maybe we’re getting to a point where they’re becoming irrelevant—maybe not. I think the more help, the better. Yet I also have a real hard time letting anyone else do anything for me. The thing that hangs me up is that asking for help is conceding autonomy. Criticizing assistance is a totally crap move, but I’ll admit that I’ve done it. The old gift horse in the mouth deal.

So you have to be willing to ask for help in this game, and you have to be willing to realize it’s not going to look or feel exactly the way you want it to. People need other people. Even writers. Especially writers, probably. Because we’re all crazy narcissists with deep emotional problems. And those are just the good ones. Anyway, get help. Cheers and see you after.