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Young Writers Society


Navel-gazing



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Sun Sep 02, 2007 4:42 am
Snoink says...



In some harsher critiques on YWS, you'll find a lot of references to navel gazing. So what is this?

Well, technically, it's staring at your belly button. That's the very technical version. So what does it actually mean?

Navel-gazing, to put it politely, means that you are too wrapped into yourself to see beyond the greater world. For example, if I write poetry that talks about me, me me, without talking about anything else, that is navel-gazing. If I write a story about me, me, me, then that would be navel-gazing. And mind you, this isn't just a piece that includes you, you, you, all the time. The subject never deviates from you! So it just continues and goes on and on until you want to strangle a writer.

This, believe it or not, is a bad thing.

So, what can you do to solve this? The obvious answer is "grow up" but that may seem slightly condescending to everyone. So, instead, you have to look at things in a more mature manner. Writing all day and all night, is sure to make you go insane, especially if that's all you do. Believe me... I've been in that place before. I wanted to become a great novelist and I would write the greatest piece in the world! I have since given that dream up. But living indoors for no real reason is probably a bad thing. Meet people, listen, go out and live.

You see, writers can be very self-absorbed, but if you realize that there is more than just you through living life, then your writing is bound to be better.
Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibi est.

"The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the Master calls the butterfly." ~ Richard Bach

Moth and Myth <- My comic! :D
  





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Thu Nov 29, 2007 12:56 am
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Kit says...



Navel-gazing? Come on, use the technical term, omphaloskepsis. It's more fun.
Princess of Parataxis, Mistress of Manichean McGuffins
  








You walk into this room at your own risk, because it leads to the future, not a future that will be but one that might be. This is not a new world, it is simply an extension of what began in the old one. It has patterned itself after every dictator who has ever planted the ripping imprint of a boot on the pages of history since the beginning of time. It has refinements, technological advances, and a more sophisticated approach to the destruction of human freedom. But like every one of the super states that preceded it, it has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and truth is a menace.
— Rod Serling