[writing] トップをねらえ! (Toppu o Nerae!)

A string of Tweets from me from a few days ago:

Writing thoughts 1: Knowing you need to get better = frustrating, but doable.
Writing thoughts 2: Knowing you need to do your best = frustrating, but doable.
Writing thoughts 3: Knowing the difference between "your best" and "THE best" = frustrating and hard as hell.

So why "toppu o nerae" (aim for the top) instead of "ganbatte" (do your best)? In this case, because I think I've been confusing the two for the longest time, at least in terms of my writing, and only recently have I really thought about the difference between the two mindsets I could possibly have in this case.

When I first thought about writing as a lifelong career rather than a hobby or "something to do" oh so many years ago, I of course understood that my first works were going to be far, far from being brilliant works of prose. I understood I'd have to learn the hard way, honing the craft as they say. It took a hell of a lot longer than planned, considering my penchant for being easily distracted and needing to do a lot of growing up by the time I left college, but by the mid-90s I knew I'd finally gotten past that phase and moved forward. I spent most of the late 90s and early 00s learning how to write a story and how to do it well. There were a lot of false starts, trunked ideas and dead ends, but there were a lot of good things--the trilogy, for example.

So here I am, having finally hit the first two writing thoughts I mentioned above.

What about number three, then?

The problem seems to be that, for the longest time, I confused writing MY best work with trying to write THE best work that would put my manuscript on top of everyone else's, spark an agent's interest, and get published. Or more to the point...it wasn't so much confusion as seeing it in the wrong way. I've certainly accepted that I'm not a brilliant writer, so I'm not aiming for bestseller lists. I think most if not all writers think the same way (and musicians, come to think of it), which is probably why they're always a bit surprised and embarrassed when a fan goes all asquee over them if they happen to meet. They did their best, but it's always unexpected to hear someone else quantify it to a much higher level.

Which brings me back to my point--I've been aiming for the top of my game, and I'd like to think I'm much closer to that point than I was in the past. But that's the thing: I've been looking at it as a game, a race: trying to be better than my fellow writers, as if it was a competition. If I don't get the gold medal, I'll never be published. I could pigeonhole this viewpoint as a Good Ol' American Competition, that that's how I was brought up as a child of the 80s and overfed with the mass media of newly minted cable channels and Cold War movies where I MUST HAVE EVERYTHING NOW AND BEFORE EVERYONE ELSE, but that's too easy. It's not as if I was trying to outwrite my friends and favorite authors by 2002 when I wrote the novel I'm currently revising. It's more that I never got around to adjusting that mindset and my emotions just happened to fall into that default from time to time, if that makes sense.

Now that I've come this far, and especially now that I get why the past revisions of A Division of Souls weren't nearly as good as they should be, I think I've finally adjusted that mindset, and I'm seeing the results now.

I stopped trying to write better than everyone else; instead, I'm trying to write better, period.