One: a young woman in my writing class shared the first chapter of her novel with us – terrible (in my humble opinion). I think bad writing is something most people instinctively recognise like bad singing or bad coffee. It might have been redeemed had it had plot rather than characters ('Mary Sue's to be precise) running around doing drugs and engaging in meaningless sex; it could have been more readable if there some 'show' amongst all the 'tell'; maybe if the sentences had been in a consistent tense I would have found something nice to say. It failed all these tests. But my point is: she, the young author, probably didn't think it was terrible. She is very enthusiastic and passionate when she talks about books and writing. This work did not seem representative of her – completely unlikable work from a very likeable person. (I don't know that I knew right away that my first attempt at a novel was terrible, but I didn't show it to too many people so maybe I had an inkling. Now I know it is and it will stay safely in my writing box.)
Two: I've been feeling sick for a few weeks. It started out low-level, but has ramped up in the past week. I keep wondering if I'm in terrible pain or just moderate or everyday pain. I don't think it's too unbearable, but to someone else (my doctor when he asks, for example) it might feel more or less severe. The really shitty thing about this pain is that it's sucked my empathy for my students' issues (and beginning writers, you might argue), and it's drained my energy and creativity so that I'm not much more than a roommate to my husband at the moment. Part of me wants it to hurry up and go away, but then I wouldn't know the cause; and part of me knows I need it to last long enough that they can find the issue, then fix it. Terrible.
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