eglamkowski's Journal: R.L. Dabney

"If all you mean by education is teaching people to read and write, then all you will accomplish is to create a mass market for trash literature."

Was he ever right about that...

Or as Voltaire said: "It is far better to be silent than merely to increase the quantity of bad books."

I keep wanting to write a novel, but every time I start I feel like what I've written is so cheesy bad that I stop. Then I read some other published novel and I'm like "My work is waaaay better than this piece of crap!" Of course, when I worry about my own writings, the kinds of novelists I'm comparing my own work against is among the likes of Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, Goethe, Kafka, et al. Perhaps not very fair, but then again, if I can't write that well then what's the point of publishing an inferior piece of crap? There is a remote chance it could make me some money, but it wouldn't be anything I'd be proud of. Bleh.

The only thing you're missing...

[Captain Splendid]

...is a good editor. Somebody whose taste and sense of honesty you trust. You're always going to be too critical of your own work, no matter how good it is, so get another viewpoint, and learn whether your and their version of 'sucks' sync up or not.

Don't Stop

[johndiii]

You never really know what the quality will be like until you are well into it.

Write!

[Shadow Wrought]

From what I have read of your writing your voice is worth hearing. It is an easy trap to compare yourself to far more accomplished authors, but that's really doing you a disservice. Writing is a skill as well as an art. The more you do the better you will get. Plus you seem to have a way of connecting with Asian stories in a way that makes them easier to understand for those of us who don't know the culture as well.

I will also give you flip side: as much as we are deluded with crap, where would be wit