Daily Aphorism: Roll a stone onto your voice, and you live in your grave. You have forever to say nothing.
Stupid aphorism – but meant to give me a kick in the ass.
No one likes a know-it-all, and they like critics even less. I happen to be both – I forever find myself rolling stones onto my voice, simply because I know how much of an arrogant prick I’ll seem if I say what’s on my mind.
You would think a blog and an opinionated prick would be a match made in heaven. Here it is, a platform I can use to spout whatever to whomever, and I find myself with a cramp in my trigger-finger.
The fact is, even after all these years and eight completed novels, I still feel foolish writing period. Insecurity complex? Not really. I truly feel like an idiot, and I truly feel like I have some kind of ‘special insight’ to offer. Call it cognitive bipolar disorder: the tendency to be utterly convinced one minute, and utterly unimpressed the next.
This is why I think a career in academia would have been disastrous for me. Pretty much every paper I worked on occasioned a crisis of confidence, the conviction of misplaced conviction. You need to sustain belief in your own bullshit for at least several months at a time to be a functional academic.
Apparently something similar is the case for bloggers. I think of at least two or three things I want to say here every day, but when it comes time to sit down and write, those things seem stupid, trite, or self-serving.
Doubt defines me. Always has. Small wonder I’m so intent on turning it into the virtue of virtues!
As a rule, I only post the things that seem stupid, trite or self-serving over on The Speculative Scotsman.
Most days, I buy into bullshit wholesale. Most days…
I’m surprised you have to buy it! Comes free in this country…
Good to see you Niall!
scott/
Eight completed novels? Five Earwa books, Neuropath, Disciple of the Dog, and? Are you hiding something from us?
Yep.
Heh, that would explain why my enthusiasm for my PhD thesis went into the air at some point. It takes years to write a PhD thesis in Germany, maybe too long for that bullshit thing.
Seriously, I started second-guessing some of my ideas which didn’t help when I hit a downtime (albeit I still believe some of my bullshit is pretty sound), though the main reason was the lack of support and the growing enthusiasm for writing fiction instead.
When you can’t solve the crime using theory, the best you can do is re-enact the scene using narrative.