Sturgeon's Law really is cutting into my will to write.

"90% of everything is crud."

As I already said, it's really, really cutting in on my will to write, because I constantly fear that my writing will be crud, and while I don't want it to be considered perfect, I at least want people to think it's decent.

Any advice on throwing away this thought out of my mind?

Doesn't matter.

Everybody writes crud. You keep writing cruds, learn from them, improve yourself, and then you write something that isn't crud and in fact very good.

Are you planning to profit from the work?

Are you under some sort of contract?

Look the way I see Sturgeon's Law is that it is advice for the consumer not the producer.

The way it's used now kinda seems like the exact opposite of how Sturgeon first meant it (a bit of an exaggeration maybe). I wouldn't take it as gospel truth. Besides, that's what multiple drafts are for.

Go out and read some real crud. As in, something written by somebody else that you can consider crud, and wonder how it got published, and wonder how it got fans. You can write better than that. You know you can.

If it reads like something you'd write and you think it's crud, then read something that you think is better and try to write like that. Find out what you think is good writing, and find people who hate it. Get some righteous anger going until you know that they're wrong, because this other writer is actually decent.

The only way to write better is to write more. Let's say that's what Sturgeon's Law for writers means. Write through that 90% of your time spent writing that churns out not very good writing. When you have met your quota, you will be left with 10% of good writing that will even astonish you. (Actually, it's going to be the result of practice, but making it sound like it's a conserved quantity will hopefully get you to go through the motions of it anyway.)

Eh, well, if 90% of everything is crud then surely, in comparison, you don't suck that badly and it's worth giving it a go, right?

As said before, Sturgeon's Law is an advice to the consumer rather than the producer. It can be extended to "most people don't know what they are doing but do it anyway. So don't try to consume everything they make if you can instead search for things that you actually like," and this is the meaning you should pay attention to.

Besides, some people do enjoy crud. Oh, sure, not the heaviest sort that is probably some kind of biohazard (as in: you read it, you go blind), but this is proof enough to say that the cruddiness of a work is a subjective, rather than objective, measure and thus writing crud might actually not be that bad a thing.

Point is, not every work can be a Magnum Opus. And that's cool. I don't read only works of that fame. Nor do I only write work of that fame. In fact, most of what I write appears to me to be crud; people who've read it say that it's at least decent. And if you have any sort of talent for it, it should be the same for you. So just write, and give it to someone to read, and don't get discouraged by what you think of your work, don't let stupid stage fright (because that's what you have right now) stop you from trying.

edited 11th Oct '15 5:30:00 AM by Kazeto

Sturgeon's Law shouldn't have any impact on your writing. Writing isn't a magical act, not if you are talking about the actual act of writing ("drafting").

Drafting is a challenge of endurance, not precision.

Draft in a way that keeps yourself engaged and entertained. Don't WORRY so much about "rules" or "standards" other people have— that comes later. Maybe some works are pure genius that nail everything the first time. Most, even many of the "great" ones, are not.

The most generic, cliche story ever written will ALWAYS be better than the story that was never written. It doesn't matter how insightful, innovative or amazing the "idea" for the unwritten story is.

When you revise you have a lot of tools at your disposal to take tropes and other story elements and make them more unique or at least make them feel less forced. Our minds tend to think in archetypes, so it isn't surprising that an initial piece may still be close to that.

It's much, much easier to alter something you've already written to be less cliche than it is to come up with something totally fresh from scratch. That applies to the actual quality of the writing as well as the freshness of the ideas equally.

Here's how I look at it: I definitely fall into the 90%. No question. My hope, though, is that I'm at least in the top 10% of that 90%. I won't be better than 90% of what's out there, but maybe I can be better than 80% of it.

After all, there are degrees of crap, and plenty of crap can still be pretty good.

Everything I wrote for more than ten years was crap. But I kept writing. I read as many books ABOUT writing as I did stories, and was always trying to learn about the actual WORK of writing. I understand fiction a lot better than I did before, and on a slightly more "intuitive" (as opposed to critical or analytical) level. I can tell you how to write the things you want to write, because I had to learn how to write the things I wanted to. Now, I know how to write stories, but I get stuck in the mire of world-building

You've got a dozen bad pieces in you, pal. Start getting them out now.