Hit A Couple of Myth Nerves…

I Got Letters… Not Happy Letters…

Seems the other night when I said a writer was lost in the years of their own world building, and that they were doomed, I caused a little anger.

Well…. It seems my observation did not go over well with two writers who actually wrote me, which means there are more who did not.

It seems that my blanket statement that if you spend years doing nothing but world building from the critical side of your brain you are lost caused anger.

The myth is that you have to create your entire world, know every detail in it, before you dare write a word in that world. Fear of getting something wrong, I guess, even though they made up the world.

Now I have zero issue with writers writing in big, complex worlds. I do so, actually, but you create the worlds by writing in them, not doing spreadsheets and character sketches (with pictures from magazines) and things like that.

Now neither writer defending their fantastic world-building skills mentioned the name of a novel or short story they had written in that world. Sort of made my point.

Creating elaborate worlds ahead of writing functions in a number of ways…

1… Makes the writer feel like they are writing.

2… Calms the fear of writing.

3… Gives the writer a feeling of superiority over their coffee-shop peers.

4… Guarantees they will never fail in their writing because they will never write.

5… And last, but most importantly, they can tell their family they are writing and not have to actually show them anything.

My solution if you are a writer who has bought into the world-building myth, put it all away. Back up everything and get it on a few hard drives or in the clouds and get it off your computer completely.

Then sit down and write a short story that has nothing to do with your made-up world. In fact, make it in a different genre.

Publish the story and repeat for four or five years, learning how to be a better storyteller, building stories and novels that have nothing to do with your old world building at all. Then after five years, without looking at the world building, just delete it all and keep writing new stuff,

No one I have ever seen go down this myth trap of building huge worlds ahead of time before actually writing has managed to escape and become a full-time writer, let alone ever write much of anything in the world they built. Just too much pressure.

So I did not answer those two letters except here in public in this blog. Just nothing I could say to either one of them, sadly.