Why writing is the most underrated form of art (and why I'm OK with it)

Oh, hey there.  Me again.  That girl who said she was going to post twice a month and subsequently did not.

As an apology, have some food porn:

Cheesecake & Raspberry Brownies

Candied Orange Peels

Homemade Butterbeer

Hells yeah, you should be jealous of my HP mug!

^^^ Definitely got a ton of butterbeer all over my hands while cooking and taking pictures.

Clearly, did not care. _∨∨∨

There.  All better, now.  I hope we can be friends, again.

The truth is, I've been cheating on you with my first love - story writing.  I was recently presented with the opportunity to possibly be published in a professional anthology, so I spent the greater portion of March writing a short story for submission.

Will any of you get to read it?  Probably not.  One, it's an adult story - to which some of you are going OH EM GEE WUT.  ADULT FICTION.  SCANDALOUS.  To which I have to answer - AWH MAWH GAWHD, ES TEE EFF YUU, YES.  GROW UP.  Anyway, the point is, it's not super appropriate to publicly share.  Second - remember, I said "possibly".  Just because I submitted something, that doesn't mean it will be accepted, because that is how writing works.  Thirdly, I also discovered that it was more or less expected that you revise the piece a metric pork-load of times, and because I came late to the party, I missed out on the critiquing stage, which means I stand significantly less of a chance.  And I can understand that.  To a point.

But at the same time - I don't.  In professional writing, you rarely end up with the same story you started with.  Sometimes entire chapters are slashed, people ask you to re-write everything from a different character POV, or change themes altogether.  In what other art form does one expect you to take the thing you've worked on for ages, essentially take a pair of scissors to it, and re-do the entire thing with rearranged snippets?  Sure.  There are drafts of everything.  But the scrutiny involved with the written piece is not parallel to that of the visual or audio.  A dozen-plus editors don't swoop down and rip out entire movements of a symphony.  They don't take a brush and paint giant chunks over a face that isn't pleasing (maybe censors do that, but I think that's a different subject). 

I don't think people appreciate the level of drafting/editing goes into writing anymore, even authors themselves.  Case in point, I mostly just rant, and then maybe go back and touch up a few typos/awkward phrases when I read over my posts a second time.  Writing as a profession is taxing, and frankly, it's not very rewarding.  Like most other things, it's become much harder to get accepted by a publisher, and with the rising price of printing, one doesn't see much of the profit (and don't give me any BS about self-publishing - that's hardly any better, and it comes with a number of tradeoffs.)  You pour your heart into something, but unlike a picture, a sculpture, a song, or even a cake, you can't really get the instant satisfaction from it.  It takes dedication to read.  Furthermore, even if you get something published, not everyone gets to be JK Rowling.  A few dozen people may pick up your book, but it will likely sit, a dusty tome, before long.

And you know what - I'm strangely sort of OK with it.  First of all - writers are all more or less being praised for the fact that they are inveterate (if fabulously talented) self-important liars, so anything that discourages fibbing is probably a good thing.  Second - maybe it's our form of practice.  You can't really "rehearse" writing.  Like everything else, you get better at it by doing more (i.e., write a ton, edit a ton, re-write a ton - voila - pray to the Heavens that you can actually tell a coherent story by the end of it).

Third, and maybe most important, it's all very telling.  In the fast moving world we live in today, we don't always have a lot of time to sit down and read 10,000 words of someone's manifesto.  We have Facebook, Twitter (effectively Facebook statuses condensed like cans of Campbell's Soup), Tumblr, Instagram, 5-minute YouTube videos, on and on and on.  Brevity is the soul of wit.  If we can catch someone's attention with just a splash of verbiage and picture, then bravo.

But if someone is really willing to take the time to sit down and hear what you have to say, that's a rare gift.  Maybe you've got a real talent.  Maybe you've found a unique bird (and yes, good friends always fall into the category of "unique birds".)  Either way, someone's walking away from that encounter, a little better for it.

I guess what I'm getting at is, if you're still with me, reading up to this point, thanks.  That means a lot to me.

Until the next (hopefully sooner than 2 months from now.)