What exactly is it? How do we stop ourselves writing self-indulgently? Do you write for yourself first and then the reader or the other way round? Your thoughts please.

I think the self-indulgence isn't in what words you choose, it's in not being rigorous enough with them. There's nothing wrong in writing something that you'd like to read; in fact, I'd be very worried by someone who tried to write anything else. But I think it's self-indulgent if you splurge out what you feel like saying without being prepared to work it over and over and over afterwards until it does what you want as well as it possibly can. If I think writing is self-indulgent - usually too lush or but can be too spare or too self-consciously 'literary' or 'sordid' or whatever - it's because I don't feel the writer is trying hard enough to convey it to me and other readers, but instead just churning out the standard stuff that usually works. Different from but related to laziness, in other words.

Emma

Interesting Emma - what do you mean about being self-consciously literary?

By 'self-consciously literary' I think I mean writing in a way that seems fancy or difficult or unusual in order to seem impressive, not because that's how what you want to say is most effectively written.

Most writers have a phase of it when they're learning, and the dead giveaway there is that everything is slightly wrong - words used wrongly, clever metaphors mixed, complicated sentence constructions wrong or inappropriate, sentences rijigged into the passive in unsuitable places, a fancy thesaurus-found word used when a simpler one would work better...

With more technically accomplished writers these things are right, and whether a writer is being self-indulgent is a much more subjective judgement: after all, one reader's irritatingly clever-clever sentence is another reader's compellingly unusual one. The nearest I can get to an objective criterion is in a way, a more sophisticated version of everything being slightly wrong: the words seem too much - too weird, to clever - for what's being done, the metaphors are too elaborate and subtract instead of adding to the whole, the bald Hemingway-esque style doesn't building into something compelling, but is just plain dull.

Yikes! Supper's burning!

Emma

Another breeding ground for self-indulgent writing is the assumption that everything you feel, everything you see, and every 'insight' you have must be brilliant because they seem so to you -- and that the significance of everything you say must be just as obvious to the reader as it is to you. Sometimes one sees brilliant writing that falls into this trap, and though it may be fascinating to read for a while, it tends to feel like being forced to stare at only one small corner of a large painting, and it grows old really fast. One wishes the writer would have stepped out of his (or her) head for a moment and tried to look at the world from different perspectives.

Though I suppose in this, too, one person's navel-gazer is somebody else's genius...

Yes, I think that can be true. I suppose none of us can help seeing the world from our own point of view, but it's the ones who don't know there is another place to look from who are irritating.

Emma

self-consciously literary

I hate this kind of writing. There is so much of it around. Less is more, but some authors write like they've swallowed an Oxford Thesaurus.

The weird thing is, a lot of these writers speak this way too, so they have no idea how ridiculous they actually sound. While they think their speeches (because they're incapable of a simple comment) are wise and worthy of our attention - they really do nothing but make us cringe and laugh.

Ste

<Added>

Way too deep for me on a Friday morning.

I think there's a very real place for self-indulgent writing. I find it incredibly useful. I will be the first to admit that I just cannot write poetry! However, I often write poems in my journal - just short ones that I would never ever show anyone. Sometimes I cringe at my efforts (and you should see the drawings!) but sometimes I get a sense of accomplishment in that I'm writing outside my genre. Writing in this way has often sparked an idea or a phrase that I've used in my stories.

Sue

My daily morning pages are totally self indulgent - all me, me, me! Perfect to get that out of your system first thing!

Cath

Yes, a good idea to do some journalling to get all that out of your system, before the (hopefully) more considered work.

Oh, I couldn't agree more - it's quite different when you're doing it for yourself, not for the wider world.

Emma

I stopped reading a novel recently because, after just three chapters, I was sick to death of the main character describing how incredibly beautiful she was… I kept thinking, what does that say about the author?

Morning pages, diaries, journals, are all valid forms of self-indulgence – and why not? We are writers, and use writing to express ourselves. The self-control, as opposed to indulgence, is recognising which is for public consumption and which should be kept private.

I started a thread just before Christmas about a story I was writing for myself. I have no plans to get it published so I can indulge myself. Well, that’s the theory. In practice, I'm using it to experiment with styles and themes. It’s very liberating.

Dee

Yes, I remember that thread. It was very interesting, and a good corrective to the publication-focussed talk that we do such a lot of the rest of the time.

Emma

A friend of mine - and English teacher - once read a first draft of a chapter I'd written and sent back to me the following critique, starting with a quote from a critic:

"There is more to writing than simply emptying a bag of words onto the page." Good writing is about finding 'la mot juste'. As I tell my students, rather than describing how glue "comes out of the tube in a globular, sticky, viscous semi-liquid form", the word "oozes" is far more simple, precise and evocative"

That told me! In his opinion, I'd been guilty on that occasion of over-stylisation to the point where it had indeed become self-indulgent. Case in point?

Absolutely, though I'd defend the proposition that the voice you're writing in might demand the first version.

Emma