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Sep. 23rd, 2009 07:13 amIt's another truism that you can do anything as long as nobody tells you you can't.
For one thing, it's ridiculous. Nobody has told me I can't lift a Berkshire Council rubbish lorry, but I guarantee that any attempt I might make would bring nothing but muscular strain, and possibly the derision of the dustmen. And the same would have been true when I was six months old and pre-verbal, so ignorance of incapacity is no guarantee of success.
For another thing, what earthly use or comfort is it to anyone? By the time you get to our age, you've been told you can't do just about everything you might want to do. This is just rubbing it in. You can't untell somebody something. It's like virginity. Once it's gone, it's gone.
Dsvid Gerrold submitted a successful script for Star Trek at the age of nineteen. He says he did it because nobody told him he couldn't. Trust me, if that script had not been exceptionally good they would have told him he couldn't eftsoons or right speedily. I am sure there were hundreds of nineteen-year-olds back then busily bashing out scripts for Trek and sending them in. Nobody told them they couldn't either, but they didn't succeed. This, friends and neighbours, is modesty, and possibly false modesty at that.
I don't say it isn't ever true. Most truisms have a grain of truth inside them. Certainly the reverse is very often true. Being told you can't do something, often and nastily enough, can make it true to all intents and purposes. But there's not much comfort in that either. And why, in the name of the gods, isn't it true that you can do anything if someone tells you you can?
I sent a MS to an agent a while back. The response was basically that it was very clever, but that he didn't love it, and that unless he loves a writer's work he doesn't feel he can sell it. Well, it's occurred to me that unless I love a story I can't write it*, and it's depressingly true that nobody these days seems to be publishing books that I love. (Except Jasper Fforde and Pterry, and it's fair to say that they've cornered the market in being them.) So if love is the criterion, I'm pretty much doomed to non-saleability.
Which goes to prove that if there's nobody else around to tell you you can't do something, you can always tell yourself.
And then go and do it anyway. Ideally.
*Which probably makes me a hobbyist rather than a genuine writer.
For one thing, it's ridiculous. Nobody has told me I can't lift a Berkshire Council rubbish lorry, but I guarantee that any attempt I might make would bring nothing but muscular strain, and possibly the derision of the dustmen. And the same would have been true when I was six months old and pre-verbal, so ignorance of incapacity is no guarantee of success.
For another thing, what earthly use or comfort is it to anyone? By the time you get to our age, you've been told you can't do just about everything you might want to do. This is just rubbing it in. You can't untell somebody something. It's like virginity. Once it's gone, it's gone.
Dsvid Gerrold submitted a successful script for Star Trek at the age of nineteen. He says he did it because nobody told him he couldn't. Trust me, if that script had not been exceptionally good they would have told him he couldn't eftsoons or right speedily. I am sure there were hundreds of nineteen-year-olds back then busily bashing out scripts for Trek and sending them in. Nobody told them they couldn't either, but they didn't succeed. This, friends and neighbours, is modesty, and possibly false modesty at that.
I don't say it isn't ever true. Most truisms have a grain of truth inside them. Certainly the reverse is very often true. Being told you can't do something, often and nastily enough, can make it true to all intents and purposes. But there's not much comfort in that either. And why, in the name of the gods, isn't it true that you can do anything if someone tells you you can?
I sent a MS to an agent a while back. The response was basically that it was very clever, but that he didn't love it, and that unless he loves a writer's work he doesn't feel he can sell it. Well, it's occurred to me that unless I love a story I can't write it*, and it's depressingly true that nobody these days seems to be publishing books that I love. (Except Jasper Fforde and Pterry, and it's fair to say that they've cornered the market in being them.) So if love is the criterion, I'm pretty much doomed to non-saleability.
Which goes to prove that if there's nobody else around to tell you you can't do something, you can always tell yourself.
And then go and do it anyway. Ideally.
*Which probably makes me a hobbyist rather than a genuine writer.