A more modest obituary
Last week saw the passing of Ursula Le Guin, one of SF's greatest writers. I remember reading a Wizard of Earthsea and The Left Hand of Darkness in my twenties, and being inspired and challenged by her writing.
Nowadays, challenging gender stereotypes is common, but back in 1969 Le Guin's story of a race that could change gender at will was way ahead of its time. Le Guin submitted it direct to an editor at Ace Books, who bought it without her being represented by an agent.
Le Guin is recognized as one of the most important writers in the SF genre, a PhD all the obituaries about her are fulsome, full of praise for the impact her writing has had on the world and the SF genre. And reading those obituaries, I wondered how many writers were comparing their own writing to Le Guin's, and feeling like I did.
Reading the praise heaped upon her touched off my Imposter Syndrome big time. "You're just writing boring ordinary SF," it whispered. "You're not writing anything revolutionary. That's why your'e not getting published. You have nothing important to say."
I know that isn't true, as at this more nature stage of my life I am more sure of what I care about and what I detest than I have ever been. I do have strong opinions about things, and challenges to make to the world.
The issue I have is that revealing many of those opinions would entail revealing some of the deepest parts of my personal life and life history. I never cease to be amazed by how much personal information extrovert women tell total strangers within ten minutes of meeting them. But that's not for me.
My private life is private. And that feeds back into my writing. To take up some of the issues that anger and bother me I would have to reveal my personal life, and I'm not prepared to reveal some of that. So I pull back in my writing from challenging some of the things that infuriate me. And I think that when it's time to write my obituary it's going to be more modest than Ursula Le Guin's. Unless I raise the courage to bare my soul in the future.
I too read Le Guin before I even considered writing and was sent to another world. She was one of the few writers I have read that could do that to me. Now, as a writer myself, and one who enjoys attempting science fiction, I keep saying to myself that each of us is different. Enjoying reading your piece.
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