Thoughts on Writing a Novel When You're Completely Untalented

This is somewhat a continuation of the previous post, and was written at about the same time (2017).

Let me set down a few thoughts here on my expectations for this novel.

I know full well I have no literary talents.

I will never be famous as a writer.  I will never have this book commercially published.

It's likely that no one will ever even read this whole novel.
I say this with no false humility.  I have ample experience over 10 years of blogging.  Most of what I publish is not read by anyone.
And I don't blame people.  I understand that in this day-and-age of short attention spans, it's hard to find the time and concentration to read something actually worth reading.
No one takes the time to read bad writing.  Maybe people might put up with a short blog post, but nobody's going to read a whole bad novel.

In other words--I fully know that this book will never get published, and in all likelihood will never get read.

So why am I writing it?

Because it helps my sanity to be able to escape into this fictional world for a little bit every day.

Arguably it's a waste of time, but then so many things are a waste of time.  (Television, video games, youtube, twitter, etc.)

I think it's a harmless enough hobby, if it's kept in perspective.
That is, if I keep in mind that the majority of my time and energy should be spent on my career.
And if I keep in mind that I'm never going to get famous writing this story, and that it is only a hobby.

Sometimes it's a hard thing to keep in mind, though.

When I started the first draft of this story in 1999, I started off with a very clear perspective--i.e. I knew I had limited talent, but I thought this story might be fun to play around with.  And I had spent much of my  -childhood writing stories, and I missed indulging myself in that fictional world.

It is remarkable how quickly I lost perspective, however.  I quickly began imagining that I was working on the best story ever, and that this would make me famous one day.
When I finally did realize that what I was working on was absolute crap, this made the realization all that much harder.

The same thing happened in 2005--2007.
I rediscovered this story when I was going through my old computer discs.  I decided that it wasn't great, but it wasn't as bad as I remembered, and it might be fun to finish up, just as long as I kept perspective and remembered it was just a hobby.

And then I lost perspective and began imaging myself as a potentially famous writer working on a future masterpiece.

It's tempting to use these memories to flagellate myself.  "Oh, this is so typical me!  I'm so stupid!"
And believe me, I've done plenty of self-flagellating over the past 20 years on exactly this issue.

But I wonder if this isn't also just me.  If maybe this is a natural human response.

Perhaps, because of Darwinistic survival strategies, or whatever, it's hard to keep our own limitations in perspective.  Our ego desperately wants to believe that whatever we are working on is a masterpiece.  Our ego never wants to admit to ourselves how hopeless our situation really is, and how untalented we really are, because then we'd just give up on life completely.  So, I think evolution has endowed us with a completely unrealistic ego.

And there may be survival advantages to this.  If we didn't have extremely unrealistic views of our own talent, we wouldn't be ambitious.  Nobody would write novels, nobody would dare to submit their novels to publishers, and nobody would have any literary ambition at all.
So, in order for society to function, we need this sense of ego.
But although this ego and drive is necessary for the talented people in society, it can backfire for us untalented people.

See this post: http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/000809.html

Also see Whisky: https://whiskyprajer.blogspot.com/2006/08/tacit-knowledgebefore-i-wake.html

In retrospect, I poured too much of my time and energy into this novel in both time periods.  In both 1999-2001, and 2005-2007.
Actually that's not completely accurate.  I suffered from writer's block, and spent days and sometimes weeks without writing a word during those periods.
But what I did do is convince myself that this novel should be my main focus, and I didn't seriously look into advancing my career, or figuring out what I was going to do with my life.
And I should have.  Because those were key years that now I'll never get back.

Recently, however, I've found myself on the opposite extreme.  I felt like I've worked so hard at my job, and have been so repeatedly disappointed (passed over for promotion, etc) that I feel like I need to regain some sense of my self-identity.  I want to work on my stories again.
Even if no one reads them but me, I want to have this fictional world where I have control over what happens.
But the important thing will be keeping perspective.
I'll need to remember that this is only a hobby, this will never make me famous, and I should never feel that my future is in anyway tied up with these scribblings.
It sounds simple, but sometimes keeping your ego in control is difficult.