Writing is like Oatmeal.
“Bland and yet filling?” you mutter as you glumly stare at a bowl of the goop and wonder why you are doing this to yourself. Maybe if you put a bunch of fruit and chocolate chips in it, you’ll be able to choke it down for a while.
Not that you want to. You’d rather have the sugar cereal with the cartoon character on the front of the box. And I get it. I inherited my love of Froot Loops (seriously when did that name change? I thought it was Fruit Loops for eternity) from my mother who inherited from her grandmother. But as we all know, oatmeal is better for you by far and you can spice it up for sure with some pretty inventive attempts at culinary skill.
Okay, why is writing like oatmeal?
The reason why writing is like oatmeal is that because when it is done right, it is fulfilling and good for you. When it is underdone, it is sloppy and you end up tossing it. When it is overdone, it is overly chewy and hard to get through…and you end up tossing it. I struggle with oatmeal. Ask my bestie who I text frequently when I overcook oatmeal and wail about the unfairness of life (I’m a bit of a drama queen about oatmeal because I eat it but it isn’t my FAVOURITE). That 90 seconds my mother swears by seems to overcook it. The 2/3 of milk she vows cooks it just so? That just makes it a watery gloop. So I had to experiment with length of cook times and volume of milk. These days, I settle for 75 seconds and eyeball the milk to the right ratio. I mix in a spoonful of yoghurt and a small sprinkle of brown sugar and ta-da. Oatmeal a la don’t make me gag when I eat you.
The purpose of this weird analogy is that your writing is like oatmeal. 100% oatmeally goodness. If you do it right, people will find it nourishing and fulfilling. They won’t toss it. You do it wrong and they will shove it aside and reach for something that they know will satisfy them. This applies for every kind of writing: content, copy, blog, fiction, non-fiction, essay. It all applies. The problem many of writers and editors have is knowing when something is done. Many of us tinker and fret for much longer than we should and many also never finish it completely. It’s a delicate balance.
You may think: Well then, I will never let it go. So there. Take that, oatmeal.
Fair but you really SHOULD let it go. Fretting over something in such a compulsive way is a sure way to lead to you never writing again or becoming THAT person who 25 years from now goes ‘Well, I could have been a bestseller but my book just isn’t ready yet’. Firstly, that gets you no where and secondly it becomes a very easy excuse to never try. Thirdly, those people irritate the hell out of everyone else.
Sort of like that Homer Simpson quote: “I don’t know, Marge, trying is the first step towards failure.”
That time I undercooked my oatmeal/writing
I am guilty of undercooking at times despite my best intentions.
A while back, in my yonder fanfiction years, I wrote a story called ‘A Sorta Fairytale’ (blessings to Tori Amos for her song inspiration) and posted it on tumblr and AO3 (you want to read it? Sure. Here you go. I have no sense of shame about my fanfiction times. I loved every second of it, whether serious, funny, or smutty). I had started it after seeing the live-action Cinderella and just took a fandom I wrote for and plopped characters in that. Arguably, not much of the characters’ actual personalities remain but that wasn’t the point of it. I had friends who wanted to read it. I started it and made it to the end of Act 1 and got stuck. Randomly, I picked it up about a year later and finished it in a blaze of glory (in my imagination that was how it was). I plodded away at writing it and kept throwing it up. I edited it for sure and reread and read it. Eventually I made it to the big climax and went ‘…shit.’ Because I had no idea what happened next. I finished it in a few chapters after that and set it free. Just how I tell people to do.
Then I started getting a few messages. Most loved the story. But one in particular stuck out because this person was a fan of mine. “Are you going to write more? I’d love to see how this ends!”
I thought it had been done. I was wrong. As I reread it, I saw the reader’s point. I hadn’t thoroughly written out the ending and it left the people who knew my writing well feeling empty. The rest of it? Loved it. The ending? Not so good. I should have spent more time in development and focussed harder on a satisfying conclusion to it.
You can see this even in traditionally published books that have been through the editorial ringer. Spend any time in reader groups and you will see people grumbling that the book finished on a sour note for them. Sure, they still like it but they didn’t have that ‘god I need a *insert vice*” moment that maybe they should have. You can even see it in music from various artists. Something is just…lacking.
That time I overcooked my oatmeal/writing
I love this self-flagellation schtick I’m pulling. Really.
Not really.
But I don’t want to really pick on another writer about this. We’re all guilty of it and I can’t be truthful if I don’t admit I do it too. I mean, I might still pick on something but I’ll pick a big example at that point by a writer who, arguably, has the marketing and editorial team behind them to see it doesn’t happen.
But I digress. On to the whipping post.
I wrote a book called ‘Sinslinger: Erstwhile’ under a pen name T.C. Hess (back when I had delusions of importance that I needed a pseudonym for a fantasy book for some reason). I had started that book on all the wrong notes. The first wrong note was writing it for my fandom friends because it somehow seemed to taint it. Not the part of writing it for friends, that can be fun, but I just couldn’t escape the tropes of my own fandoms. Or the style that fanfiction has (more on that on a later post. There is definitely a ‘fanfic feel’)
So I tried to write original while still, in essence, writing fanfiction.
Crap.
So I spent a whale of a time in the overwriting/editing/rewriting/overwriting cycle. And the end result? It sunk. Sunk hard. It was hard to read even for me. I wrote its sequel with a sense of glumness, in the throes of creative depression that I couldn’t shake and was using writing to cope with. The sequel ‘Remote’ I put on Wattpad.com and it did okay but not great, you know?
(I took all of my writing off Wattpad recently for reasons I will explain at a later date)
The problems with both of those books was I overdid them. I overthought and over-worried. I worried about everything. Was it tropey? Not tropey enough? Was it too violent? Was it too light? Did it make sense? My brain was constantly puzzling over it. Now, interestingly, this book took me less time than many of my books because of my bipolar-induced mania but that in itself was a problem. Because I couldn’t trust my mania when I finally hit my norm. I way overthought everything and in the end, my writing comes off as hard to chewable and not easily digested. It isn’t something you want to return to. Hell, I don’t want to return to it. I’m sure it reads fine to some but for me I can see that big old charred mess.
Overcooking can cover a lot of writers, especially in the fantasy world. Writers who vow to put out the next book in the next two years and it becomes twenty. We get into our own heads. We let ourselves distract ourselves into a myriad of other things and then we never finish because ‘we’re never satisfied’. When it finally comes out, it just doesn’t live up to the hype of the wait.
Is the oatmeal theory only for fiction writing?
Alas. No. You can see oatmeal in everything, really.
- Albums from artists that were years in the making that they spent half the time agonizing over and half the time half-assing, knowing hardcore fans will wait forever.
- Articles where the writer gets so knee-deep in their own semantics that you read it and go ‘wait but what’s the point?’
- Vlogs where the vlogger resorts to an over-edited mess of a video because it has to be perfect.
- Blogs where the blogger’s posts become more and more infrequent because they worry they’re going to offend someone (I was in this camp for a very long time).
People of all kind, in every industry, have this problem. Who hasn’t written an email out…and rewritten it multiple times in fear of offending someone with our invisible tone? Or drafted out a wall of text showing how we truly feel and then end up sending just a passive aggressive ‘k’ to the other person? In my opinion, many artists have it worse because many of us tie up our identity in what we do. We take our art personally because art is personal. You can’t escape that. It is coming from you, birthed from you. To have art not be personal is something I know exists and some people have no problem but this blog isn’t really for them in the first place.
How do we know our oatmeal/writing is done?
Unfortunately, this part isn’t easy. At all. I don’t know many writers who instinctively know when their stuff is done. I see lamentations in many groups from authors who grumble about how fast other writers seem to be able to finish but it could be for several reasons why that is. Maybe they don’t have as deep an attachment. That’s them. Maybe they got their friend to read it and they went ‘GENIUS’ (my friends are far more pragmatic about stuff like that. Thanks guys.) Albeit…should you trust someone who only tells you the positive about your writing? I mean I’d rather not…
There’s a few methods you can use. A litmus test, as it were:
- Get a beta reader in your area
- Get a beta reader outside of your area
- Put it away and reread it yourself after a bit of time *a month or two*
- Send it to a professional editor who will help you make it better
Essentially:
- Just say fuck it and do it anyway when you can’t think of a legit excuse not to
Knowing when your oatmeal is done takes time, skill, and some experience. Don’t worry if you don’t ‘get it’ right away. Most of us don’t. We’re too closely connected to our work. Setting it to one side and allowing others to give their opinions takes away the ‘sacredness of art’ some people feel. It is very scary to give your art to someone, regardless of medium. But you have to if you are looking to have it seen. The famous line of ‘everyone is a critic’ hold true because it is sucky but true. And sometimes those critics can help you.
Before you allow someone’s opinion to deter your dreams of being a writer, remember a very important quote from Brené Brown:
“If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I am not interested in or open to your feedback.”
Choosing those to trust when you are finishing your oatmeal and want them to taste it is a practice that you need to repeat several times. Which is natural. You just need to remember who is on the other side, what you believe to be true, and how much you are willing to accept of their opinion. If you go to someone who notoriously cuts you down, you’re setting yourself up for as much failure as if you go to someone who loves everything you do without question. You need honesty.
But that honesty has to start with yourself. When you are honest with your skill set and when you need to let things go, you can move on to getting better and improving over time.