Particularly when you’re the writer.
I don’t remember where I read that beginning writers antecipate that their career will be — as their school career often was — a series of people, overawed by their amazing writing ability, patting them on the back and instead it most often resembles a series of kick in the teeth. I do know after twenty years of trying to be a writer and watching people try and many drop by the way side that those who don’t get used to the kicks and learn to heal from them don’t last. This is no field for wounded souls, even if we are all, more or less, emotional walking wounded. (Not sure why, but that’s a consideration for another post.)
But then there’s the other danger — the fear that you become so used to the pain that it’s all you see. I’ve slogged through endless gray prayries of nothing with no hope in sight for many many years. And then i learned to reward myself.
Part of this was K. W. Jeter who taught the novel part of the Oregon Writers’ Workshop which I attended — was it really ten years ago this Spring? — and who told us you have to learn to reward yourself for writing because often no one else will and after a while you start flinching from the activity as if from pain.
He suggested music or something you really want to do, not food, for obvious reasons.
Alas I still do too much writing-related munching, usualy to keep energy up after a dubiously restful night. However, I learned to reward myself in other ways, and I thought I’d share a couple of them.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that you’ll return to a place that’s inviting, so first of all try to make your desk/work area one. Oh, it will get messy. Right now on the homestretch of two books, I have books piled around my desk so I have to step over them to get in. HOWEVER I do clean as much as I can, and I try to decorate in a pleasant way. A way that often has to do with either rewarding myself or promisign myself something.
So, look at what’s hanging over my desk: 
On top of my desk — an oak roll top desk designed for computers — I have this:
And what is this, you ask? This is the reward. I should first of all explain that I am, like a magpie attracted to shiny objects. So I decided to buy a decorative glass float — though an egg and a little metal dragon are there too (Dragon hidden behind egg from this angle) — as a reward for each novel completed. Here are the rest of them:
of course now I have way too many of these, can’t cram any more in (some of them are hiding others, as is) so I’m looking for another reward. I think perhaps I’ll get the kind of fossil imprint thing you can hang. I have a blank wall near the scary bookcase.
And now I go back to work.
According To Hoyt 
Geode slices, maybe?
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You know… that is something I never thought of. I always thought of my reward being being able to pay the bills (important, but not attractive! -the financial rewards have not stunned with generousity or vast motivation!) and getting my copies (which tend to arrive late if at all) and recognition (what? who? eh?).
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For me, just the fact that the @#$#ing thing is *done* is the reward. It’s finished, I can close the file and I don’t have any more work (beyond editing, but to me editing is a lot easier) to do on it. The bloody thing is out of my hair and I can obsess about something else.
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Done is good. Very very good at times. But I’ve been doing this for 15 years, and I’ve achieved it a lot of times. (My first book and first story were just pure miracle – things of joy just to have somehow DONE) But I lose count but that was 18 novels ago – with 3 at 3 normal book size – call it the equivalent of 25 novels later. Kids stories, shorts… a lot. I know I CAN finish it, get it out… but it is wearing thin in satisfaction terms. I find myself reaching the ‘should I’ at times. You have to have a cast iron self-belief and a lot of determination. For me that had to have a foundation in the belief that I could be a successful writer of popular fiction (because that is what I am trying to do). I’m still not in a region of security with that. Doubt seeps in. A bit of a visible reminder of the huge distance (and effort) survived, and relative achievement – a bit of short term reward beyond surviving and dreams (they’re thinner than they were) might make it easier. It seems worth trying.
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well, this was why it took me forever to buy into the reward thing. Because I do get paid. However, since the recognition or even the big bucks… well… you know… I’ve found rewarding myself with something and affirming it matters TO ME make it less painful if nothing good happens afterwards. :)
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Oh I can buy into it! (just as long as it is CHEAP;-)- money…. what is that) I just never thought of it like that. I think it is a good point. Certainly most of the midlist authors I’ve met feel under-valued. And self esteem begins at home ;-)
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there’s a reason i’m sticking to fanfic right now. beyond the fact that i’m still learning to write well, i also enjoy that right now, writing is 1) fun and 2) able to garner comments both critical and squeeful instantly. when you’re in the learning stage, this helps a heck of a lot, even when you’re slow as molasses like i am.
-bs
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Yeah, fanfic seems like a really, really good way to do the learning curve. There’s also the benefit that you’re writing in an established universe and you *can* use established characters, which lets you focus on other stuff. And the whole guaranteed-audience thing has got to be a huge morale booster.
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Fanfic CAN be good, particularly if you can post it somewhere and get comments which are a reward. This is part of reason I do austen fanfic.
The thing to watch out for, though, is that fanfic CAN warp you — doesn’t mean it will, but it can. You’re dealing with pre-set characters and you don’t need nearly as much foreshadowing or description. I have a very good friend who is an excellent writer except for the “fanfic marks.” I have to get my head above water in writing so I can devote time to working with her again and trying to figure out how to erase those.
They’re very similar to the habits people get into when they do years of write-for-hire in other’s universes.
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i somewhat disagree re: not needing foreshadowing and the like. the very best fanfiction often reads amazingly like the usual sci-fi narrative. that is to say, choosing the exact right words and using subtle foreshadowing is really just as important in fanfic as anywwhere else. a lot of people in fandom don’t seem to be litfic fans – or are literature fic fans and not scifi fans – and suffer from lack of professional examples, if my own reading experiences are anything to go by. but i know that when i write, i attempt to mimic the style of scifi novels in terms of narrative flow, which details to write, and *how* to embed the foreshadowing type stuff.
the only thing that prior known characters give a real advantage for is 1) filk-type stuff, which is not really different than previous offerings of filk other than being in prose instead of verse, and 2) things that deliberately play on the tropes one finds in fanfic story-telling. and again, it’s funny because you know the in-jokes, not necessarily the characters.
having known characters certainly does *not* prevent you from having to be *able* to characterize. out-of-character rants are common throughout fandoms and make up the majority of fanficrants rants, i think. (well, it’s either characterization rants, or bad-sex rants…) and i know that, contrary to how luke_jaywalker put it, one of the best things about fanfic is that you can, if you choose, concentrate on learning *how* to write a character – consistently, correctly, and logically.
anyway… just my two cents. :-p i gotta be careful about my passion, because i’ll start lecturing on it, heh.
-bs
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boogie,
I don’t mean your writing in particular. There are people who write “publishable” in fan fic or not. But it is a danger for most people if they never branch out. :)
That said, I’m a fanfic writer to, and certainly my characters get quite different from what I’m handed. :) For ex, Jane Austen would die with Darcy as dragon-shifter. I’m sure.
Fortunately she’s already dead. :)
Sarah
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too
It’s the keyboard’s fault. I have a wireless keyboard and I seemingly type too fast for it. It tends to eat the second in double letters.
Sarah
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Slight correction
That should be “Darcy as hot dragon-shifter”. Must get these things right ;)
Kate
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Rewarding myself after every novel with a drink of “the good stuff”. Or if I’m ambitious, I go out and buy a book by one of my (guilty pleasure) favorite authors.
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