Green Room - Week 13 - Day 3

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine asked a question on the Book of Face. Normally I don't mix the two worlds.

Except of course when I do!

I babbled on with an answer and probably didn't actually cover anything she actually wanted an opinion on. But that's what I'm good at doing! :)

How do we know the difference between self confidence in our own work (knowing it's good) and self delusion (thinking that it's good)? Do you really need to "believe" that your work is good, or if it is good will everyone just know?

(There was more to it, and the original post cited as a jumping off point was http://betsylerner.wordpress.com/2011/02/06/everybody-get-together-try-and-love-one-another-right-now/#comments - so feel free to jump off from there as well!)

I'm always seeing people talk about what works "In Idol". But the problems that you come across have the same roots as ones that you come across in "real world conditions".

Except of course in the "real world" people don't post links like, Second Chance Idol poll http://community.livejournal.com/therealljidol/425695.html
or Work Room http://community.livejournal.com/therealljidol/426100.html
or Topic post http://community.livejournal.com/therealljidol/425810.html

If you try that there, they might look at you like you are weird. Then again, considering who I am talking to, I imagine you must be used to that now!

Comments

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

Did I stumble in first?

Woot! I did! I just happened to load up my Friends page just in time!

[sra33.livejournal.com]

*waves pom poms* :D

[comedychick.livejournal.com]

Woot woot! I was behind because I was reading a comment you left me. And IMing. Always with the IMing ;)

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Drat! :)

[java-fiend.livejournal.com]

Knowing you as I do, you probably did stumble in. :-p lol...

[spydielives.livejournal.com]

I actually stayed awake, just so I could say "Good night!"

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

I do that too most nights :)

Goodnight!

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Second? Maybe?

[sra33.livejournal.com]

THIRD! So close! :D

[sra33.livejournal.com]

OMG I'M ACTUALLY UP WHEN THE GR GETS POSTED!!! *squee of joy*

It just so happens I'm going to sleep RIGHT NOW, but wanted to check my email first real quick. :P

I'm still massively encouraging votes over at SCI. Last two weeks, make 'em count! :D

My teachers piled up the homework this weekend (an exact opposite of last weekend), but one of them involves photography illustrating "light", so that's going to be a lot of fun to do!

Anyway, tired and cranky, so I should get going.

Still excited I'm here when the GR goes up. ^^
~Sammy-Joe

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

Ha! You sound like me with the GR most nights. I check my e-mail once more before heading to bed....and there it is!

Not tonight though, I was reading my friends page and saw it. And I'm not going to bed this instant, but soon. Very soon I hope.

I am still pushing for reading in SCI too! I put up a rec list on yesterday's GR this morning, and suggested people give your entry a read too since it made me laugh! I haven't had a chance to comment yet, life is crazy....but I agree with everything you said there :)

[beeker121.livejournal.com]

I'm still at work, so seeing the Green Room pop up for 'tomorrow' is a little odd. Of course, if anyone can bend time it would be Gary.

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

It is a bit odd to see it pop up at 9 PM for tomorrow....

[tigrkittn.livejournal.com]

Goooooood morning, Green Roomies!! People look at me like I'm weird because I am! I'm quite used to it by now and don't mind a bit!

Chatting with Ms. comedychick in Skype at this very minute, my husband just stumbled off to bed and I've got to get up early and finish making the house decent for company this weekend.

I think work can be good without you believing it is, and it can suck ass even if you think it's awesome. The work and the writer are two separate entities.

[comedychick.livejournal.com]

And then I disappeared before I could say goodbye to you!

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

Oh another quick shout out. SCI stuff is GOOD. Read it. Comment. They love the support over there (I have friends over there that have been feeling kinda sad with the lack of comments since they just wanna be read too!).

sra33, yako, and amorphous_mess all wrote pieces I suggested yesterday, but wanted to suggest again since they are kinda low in the polls still...

[roina-arwen.livejournal.com]

Anyway... I was trying to edit my earlier comment, but couldn't. What I wanted to add was that I usually have self-confidence in my own work, and I hope that I'm not deluding myself, LOL.

I still have NO CLUE what to write about this week, and am highly considering using my second bye. Grr, argh.

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

I've got several ideas....and really feel bleh about all of them. Then again, that's just how I've felt about the last few topics for me. Something is just not working for me...

But I'm too dang stubborn to use my bye I'm afraid!

[vaguelyclear.livejournal.com]

...I think I mostly delude myself XD

But right now, I'm trying to decide whether or not to make my dinner tonight, or be lazy and order pizza. Decisions, decisions.

[pixiebelle.livejournal.com]

I vote for pizza...

But only because I chose to be lazy and got fast food for all three meals today (when normally I don't eat it at all. Yucky). So now I am forcing others to be bad to make myself feel slightly less bad for my laziness (which was more about needing to go to the store than not wanting to cook).

[ecosopher.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough, I was asleep for this GR post - oddly, because it was (and usually is) in the daytime for me, but I was having an after-lunch-nap :)

I'm so stuck on what to write this time - why this topic now, for my first week in the the "real thing"? I feel so... so... ill-prepared.

*sigh*

[comedychick.livejournal.com]

After lunch naps are the best. I had one yesterday.

[liret.livejournal.com]

I am usually totally surprised by what of my writing people like. Usually, the lines I dash off without thinking people say are brilliant, and the ones I agonize over for days no one notices.

I'm not sure if this means I'm a bad judge of my own stuff or that everyone else in the world is. :P

[ecosopher.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this.

Although there are times when I've thought that stuff was great, and then worried that others might not like it AT ALL and then it turns out to be very well received... I think I both lack confidence in my writing as well as allow myself to be easily intimidated by others' work.

An example of the latter is today, when (despite having eked out something like an idea from my foggy brain) I decided to check out a few of the entries to see how others had tackled the topic, and ended up just feeling depressed about how amazingly some people write. I had to have a whole extra piece of cinnamon-sultana toast to make myself feel better!

[creature-girl08.livejournal.com]

Man, it is Thursday going for Friday and where did the week go? Good grief!

I have a wonderful kitty in my lap and to tell ya all the truth the body is fading so I am going to head off to bed. Might read green room tomorrow.

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

Good Morning GR!

To answer Gary's question...marketing is just as important as the published work. You could have written the most brilliant book in decades, but nobody's going to know that unless it gets out there.

By the same token, an awful lot of drivel gets published and marketed so much that it seeps into one's pores. Pablum for the masses, if you want. I can't put them down completely, though, because they still have a market and a few I consider experts in their genre.

As for me? This has not been a good week. I got some non-foot-related news yesterday and I can either sit here and cry or make myself laugh at the coincidence of it all. I vote for the latter.

[comedychick.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how to market my stuff better. That's always been one of my biggest issues!

[i-17bingo.livejournal.com]

Is it just me, or is it getting hard to find entries that you don't want to vote for?

Good lord, people, stop being so talented!

[team-jessie.livejournal.com]

I agree! Lots of good stuff out there!

[java-fiend.livejournal.com]

to that online social community as the "Book of Faces".

Better than the "Book of Feces"... trust me, you don't want to go to *that* online social community. :-p

Afternoon Commenter League: What were we talking about again?

[beldar.livejournal.com]

What "works in LJ Idol" is a topic that could occupy a college philosophy department for years -- longer at the University of Wallaballoo, when you factor in the drinking and the sheep dip.

Take for instance the myth that a dude can't win at this. Yesterday I helped judge a writing contest for the newspaper I work for. Entrants had sent in their getting-engaged stories for a Valentine's Day promotion. Out of seven entries, the unanimous choice of all of us in the newsroom was the only one written by a guy. And I was the only male judge.

I posted with a couple of SCI recs yesterday -- and upon reflection I think they were all ladies so I've just deflated the point of the previous paragraph. =p
Anyway, for those who didn't see my LCL post, a shout out to amorphous_mess, read2781 and ryca, and to the rare non-penguin entry by yako.
But really, there's only 20 entries, read them all! And vote, of course.

Re: Afternoon Commenter League: What were we talking about again?

[comedychick.livejournal.com]

That's assuming one of those alt journals isn't a man pretending to be a lady just like there was an alt of a lady pretending to be a man.

[amazingwriter23.livejournal.com]

Having a fun day with 3-4- year-olds today. 
There's a general good vibe in this building. Good is something you feel. That's how I both believe and genuinely know I am doing a good job. Plus, I'm working with good people, and we feed off each other. The good here grows.
Does that make any sense? Anyway, I'm loving my job. The $ is no good, but the career is. AW

[drjeff.livejournal.com]

Heya peeps!

I'm at work, last day before vacation. Yay!

I know exactly what I want to write, and I will take the topic very literally this time as I'm the biggest baseball geek ever. We'll see how THAT works out.

I'm tired of getting things in on Saturday, though. I'd sure love to go back to my old ways of writing when the prompt comes out.

I need to retire!

[joeymichaels.livejournal.com]

How do we know the difference between self confidence in our own work (knowing it's good) and self delusion (thinking that it's good)? Do you really need to "believe" that your work is good, or if it is good will everyone just know?

I think its wise to approach our work with self-confidence, but to assume we're self-deluded.

Let me quote a bit of an article (http://articles.sfgate.com/2000-01-18/news/17635543_1_percentile-dunning-incompetent):

There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David A. Dunning is haunted by the fear that he might be one of them.

Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.

On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.

It goes on for a bit, but the essential idea is that the same skills you need to be competent in an area are also the skills you need to judge competence in that area.

So, you can be an entirely incompetent writer, think you're brilliant, and be unable to recognize actually brilliant writers.

Since everyone is, to a certain extent, in this boat o' incompetence, my solution is to write with confidence, but recognize that I always have a lot to learn and need to work constantly on improving my writing.

I write with confidence because I know its ok to screw up again and again. If what I write is awful, I don't have to share it - or I can share it in the spirit of "hey, everyone, come and point and laugh at this." Furthermore, I can always solicit feedback on something I'm not confident about and rewrite portions of it. Or I can sit on it until it no longer seems familiar and then approach it as an outsider.

Anyhow, its easy to write with confidence when you don't let fear of failure get in your way, and its easy to address your self-delusion by being open to feedback and striving to improve from writing session to writing session.

That's at least in part the years of doing improv talking.

Edited to Add: Getting over the fear of failure and getting to a point where criticism is not threatening, on the other hand, are fricken hard.

[java-fiend.livejournal.com]

Getting over the fear of failure and getting to a point where criticism is not threatening, on the other hand, are fricken hard.

Well... I don't see criticism as threatening in the least... I welcome it. But getting over the fear of failure is my particular bugaboo. I never believe I'm "good enough" whatever that means.. but if confidence in my abilities were a liquid, I could maybe fill a thimble.

[spydielives.livejournal.com]

So my little poem has been making the rounds at the office; more than a few people have suggested it somehow wind up on this guy's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kappos) desk.

Professional suicide?

I dunno...

[awriterswindow.livejournal.com]

I think you need to have the confidence in yourself to come out and share your work, yet be open to constructive feedback when the work is not as good as you thought. It's a delicate balance. :)