Measure Twice, Cut Once

So I'm sitting here having some ice cream and thinking. I've had the kidney stones treated and I'm trying to get my feet under me after this -- btw, it's not a big treatment issue, but all surgeries have the same effect on me, which is to make me review everything going on to assess how I got in this position in the first place. And given that I am going through this mere days before New Year's, it seems like an especially good time to force myself into some organized thinking.

Anyone who knows me knows I don't do organized thinking all that well.

What I am is intuitive. If you leave me a map, I will follow the moss on the tree trunks instead, and without even knowing the map was ever there. I'm not a connect the dots sort of person.

But for right now, I need to force myself to do this, because as I look back at 2009 I realize it was an out of control, whiny, self-indulgent mess. And I'm not saying that to gain sympathy. No, it's just what the year was like. I allowed myself to fall down some emotional rabbit holes that I am now looking back on and thinking...well...I don't even know what I was thinking. I allowed myself to fall in with a few people who really did not turn out to be very positive forces in my life. The upside to those situations is that negative forces need something to pour negativity on, and I've stopped cooperating. Things should work out on their own now.

But I am left with an emotional mess to clean up, and a blank slate in terms of goals. What is it that I really want, besides to be published? That's like saying I want world peace: No shit, Sherlock, but how am I going to get that done?

I need to spend some time over the next week or so, brainstorming with me, to figure out what my goals are and what the necessary steps are. And yes, I can hear some of you laughing, but remember, I'm not organized by nature. What's a normal part of your routine is a giant special tent event for me. I can easily tell you all about a hedgehog named Bridget and her glorious adventures with her Mistress Marian -- and she has plenty in her little life. If I open that door in my head, those tales will just spill right out, the only effort on my part being righting* writing it down. But what to do with Bridget's many scraps? How to make something other than amusement for myself out of them? That, for me, takes gargantuan effort to figure out.

And yes, Mr MM just despairs sometimes. I'm very blessed he's yet to use the front door.

Anyway, I need to do that over the next couple of days, divide out what personal goals I have, combined with my goals for the house (which seriously went to hell in a handbasket over this year) and the garden, as well as have a really good look at what my commitments have to be versus the ones I'd like to make. I really don't care if I have to make a friggin' spreadsheet out of it to keep it all straight -- and in fact, that might not be a bad idea. But I can't go on like this, waffling my way through things and abruptly finding myself in situations. I need a plan.

So I guess I will pop back by when I have a plan. :)


*Freudian much? Or is that egotistical? *sigh* Sorry.

Merry Christmas...

...and a safe, prosperous and very happy New Year to us all.

Namaste.

Random Thought Time

I was talking to a dear friend today, about my writing neuroses (trust me -- I got 'em), when this occurred to me:

It's actually the easier thing to consider myself hamstrung by my own incompetence, because then I don't actually have to try and thus risk making any mistakes. I'm well aware of this, that being so hard on myself is, in some ways, a way to keep myself from the scariness of mistakes and the even scarier prospect that maybe I won't make them. Because, if I don't make them, then I have to push myself a little harder the next time to raise my game every time I sit down to a story. If I don't raise my game, I don't get any better. If I do raise my game, I risk failure all over again. What scares me is not so much the mistakes I can see, but the ones I'll be too ignorant to see. And yet of course I know those will be there too. That's the only way I will improve. But it does leave some side effects, like cringing every time someone recommends a story. Since it's not a story I wrote, about characters I write about, it's easy for the more neurotic parts of me to read that as dismissal.

But even if it is, so what? That's the $64,000 Question, really. Even if someone dismisses my stories, or finds them boring, or whatever, so what? Their finding some fault with my work doesn't

a) mean there actually is fault with my work, or
b) that their reaction automatically demands a reaction in turn from me, or
c) that either of us is right. Or wrong.

The reason this is important to me, even if it's just neurotic psychobabble to anyone else, is that I have spent a lot of my life being a slave to my guesses at other people's opinions. Not their actual opinions, mind you. Just what I guess they're thinking -- and I've even gone so far as to contradict in my head what comes out of their mouths, so that no amount of reassurance from the other person is enough.

Fucked up, you say? And you would be right. Very fucked up.

It's such an easy thing to end this post on a high note and say, "Today, I will stop! *sniff* *sniff* Today I promise myself I'll do better!"

Blaaaaah.

How do I know if I can stop thinking like this? I really don't know. I'm only human, and this means I'll probably keep thinking this way for a while longer at the same time I struggle not to. I am struggling not to. I don't like the parts of me that take every little thing personally and overreact and cringe when the wind blows. I want her to get over herself already. But those parts of me are large, and they are very tenderly sensitive and easily frightened. And I'll probably have to hold my own hand much longer than I want to. I'm an impatient mama.

Ok, enough maudlin hoo-haa. :) Once again, Happy Whatever-You-Celebrate, and Happy New Year, and I'll see you when I can next see you.

Seasons' Harried Greetings

Hey all!

This blog hasn't been abandoned, despite what it looks like.  It's just that the holidays are upon us, and I don't have any time to do anything but the next chore -- certainly no time to think or organize those thinks into something coherent.  I'll be back with more blather, but your guess is as good as mine as to when.

Meantime, have a happy and safe holiday -- whichever one you celebrate -- and I'll be back to annoy and bore as soon as possible!

xx mm

You Just Lack Confidence

Hmmm...you think?

A friend of mine said this to me recently.  Actually, people have said this to me a lot in my life: you're great, you just lack confidence.

Why isn't confidence something you can just go buy at the store?

I think, for me at least, that confidence is intimately tied into my standards for my own performance.  I'm sure it's true for everyone, just as I'm sure everyone else is able to cut themselves a little slack.  This same kind friend has repeatedly pointed out to me that my standards for myself are too high.  I can't cut myself any slack.  It makes no difference to me whether I am a beginner or not.  If I did not bring into being the creation lurking in my head, then I failed.  I've wasted my time, and other people's, and now I have to do it again.

I don't manage "good enough" very well.  Like Yoda says, there is no 'try', only 'do' or 'do not'.  I loathe landing in the middle, in 'try'.  It's like being Wile E. Coyote, and missing the leap across the canyon.  It really does feel that bad to me.  I'm terrible at telling myself -- at reassuring myself, because that's what we're talking about here -- I'm terrible at telling myself that something is a good first try.  I want to do better than that.  I have no coping skills in this area, and I freak out at the slightest setback. 

I really do understand that a lot of people -- a lot of people -- feel this way.  I'm not minimizing, or being self-absorbed.  I'm saying all this in the fervent hope that I'm not the only weirdo who does this to herself.  And the reason I am thinking about this is: I wrote a story some people disagree with.  Never mind the legions of people who did agree with it, and who have every right to be insulted at my inability to take their praise and loving kindness on board.  I don't blame them; I'd be pissed too.  But I'm terrified by the few who really disagree with my approach.  I'm haunted by my inability to reach them, to help them see the thing the way I see it.  I swing wildly between being deeply confused and hurt, and wanting to smack them upside the heads for being so narrow and judgmental.

I really don't handle judgmental well. 

So now I am confronted with revealing my writing to people again: hence, the freakout here.  It's not possible for me to reach everyone, and I'm not even sure that's my real issue.  I think in the end, my real issue is that I find it...well, unfair that an extremely small number of potential readers stay away because they believe my subject matter to be wrongheaded.  They don't agree with my take, and therefore feel my take has no inherent merit or value.  Am I making sense here?  In other words: "I personally don't like it, and that proves it's utter crap."

I'm sorry?  Since when is anyone's opinion that solid gold?

Let's face it, I dislike my fair share of stories too, and I wouldn't be caught dead telling the authors their work is worthless because my taste works differently.  I should point out at this juncture I am talking about fiction, and not nonfiction, or worse yet, punditry.  In fiction, either the story entertains or it doesn't.  And if it doesn't entertain me, that doesn't mean the work is inherently worthless.  That means only that I wasn't entertained.

I should also say here that before I shared my own work, I thought nothing of saying, "I don't like it, that means it's crap."  Let me say upfront that now the shoe has been shoved on my foot, it's different.  Oh, yes ma'am, it's different.  Now, I am beginning to understand, and I owe it to myself if not others to admit that.

Now, I would never tell another author "I don't like your ideas, and that means your ideas are worthless".  Because there's a difference there, between "I don't agree" and "You have no right."  Who am I to make that judgment?  Who is anyone, to say that?  My opinion is not the same as fact.

Let me say again: My opinion is not the same as fact.  It's very existence is not proof of it's irrefutability.  My opinion is not fact.  And neither is anyone else's. 

It's an idea I can't grasp at all -- or rather, I can't grasp how to handle it when it's thrown at me.  How on earth do I survive allowing these people to see how hard I work at my fiction and how vulnerable it makes me?  Revealing one's writing is a bit like getting naked in a room full of strangers.  How do I get naked in a room full of strangers, and survive the ordeal? 

Is that a matter of confidence, or emotional shielding?  You see, as I've written this, I think I've worked out that confidence doesn't actually have a lot to do with it.  I'm just not sure I will ever feel a lack of threat, which is the core of the popular idea of 'confidence'.  But right now, I'm thinking 'confidence' is actually the ability to feel shielded enough to do it anyway.  So now, what's the shielding?

Unfortunately, I have to make dinner now. :)  But I'll let you know what I think if I come up with something.

Speaking of...

Halfway there with the pumpkins I was grousing about a week or so ago.  They're turning out pretty good, all things considered. :)  More images as soon as the Munchkins figure out what theirs should look like! And please note: butternut squashies are soft -- proceed accordingly, because you know, clearly I didn't. ;)

Oh, and of course I didn't come up with the mousey pumpkin on my own!  Certainly not -- it's an idea I hijacked from marthastewart.com.  The squashies are modified MS designs too.  Wish I could take the credit, though... LOL

Playtime

I haven't really been doing a lot of writing this week. I've been slowly, achingly slowly, doing what Julia Cameron calls an Artist Date: doing something that is purely play, with no purpose and no anticipated outcome, for no good reason other than it's fun and it makes me happy.

Oooo, and do I feel wicked by Saturday Night? I wish. LOL

It's just that I have no business feeling wicked, given how hard I have fought this all week. I have a father from New England (Hi Dad!!!) and as any of you old school New Englanders know, Fun is Not Allowed. I have that impulse to tamp down fun drilled deep into me by a Dad who I know for a fact never meant for me to inherit it. But here it is, and fight it I must.

Hmm...Yoda moment.

Anyhoo, I have had the equivalent of a near emotional break down this week, all in the name of doing stuff I want to do just because I feel like doing it. I'll assume you normal people don't deal with this, but I do. And I finally figured out what really makes me sing: Food.

I like to play with my food.

And I keep forgetting that too. There are a lot of food intolerances and allergies in this household, and so food is not something we tend to approach lightly. It's hard to get excited about something that may keep you up all night, and for Mr MM especially, 30-some-odd years of battling various food and food-born mold issues have made him very wary of food in general. Its something he keeps an uneasy peace with, rather than looking forward to encountering it. There's certainly no such thing as 'comfort food' around here.

In case you're wondering, it breaks down like this:

Pickles: Celiac
Fang: Celiac; fin fish allergy (we have no idea about shellfish, but probably -- and I'm not testing it neither!)
Me: Gluten sensitive, fin fish allergy
Mr MM: (are you sitting down?) Mold -- any and all of them; Celiac; Beef; Chicken; Sulfites; Sensitive to the following: soy, pork, seafood, PGPR, MSG, anything carrot-related (this includes dill and parsley), all evergreen products (no rosemary, no pine nuts).

We're pretty sure, based on his medical history, that he started showing his first Celiac symptoms at age 3, and has shown his mold allergy symptoms since birth. However, no one ever thought to test him for Celiac or extrapolate an environmental mold allergy to a food-born one until he was 31 years old and his thyroid was slowly killing him. That was fun, as an aside, to have a 18 month old and a husband with a massive mystery illness that kept him in bed with a surgical mask on all the time. Should I mention the allergen-reactive asthma that's resulted from his environmental allergies? The ones that make us run a scent-free household (thanks for nothing, Whole Foods and your 'fragrance free actually means no fragrance added' changes). But, I digress...

What this means for me, the least intolerant in the house, is that I forget that food is also supposed to taste good and be pleasing to both body and spirit. It's just such a damned honking big deal around here, I forget.

Oh, I should also mention that Mr MM is one of those people the fragrance industry refers to as a Nose. And being a Nose means that his taste buds are also exquisitely sensitive. He'll eat about 4 things. I can make anything I want to for dinner, as long as it tastes like these four dishes. Sustaining and non-threatening to him, but (much as I love him) stultifying for me. I love food, I love new tastes, I love to play.

I moon over recipes the way most women moon over diamonds.

So this week I have been mooning over baby pumpkin pies and fabulous painted cookies and pumpkin pancakes (it is October), and I tried to make a roasted salsa (wretched, but I tried and I think I know what to fix) and I finally re-tooled a couple of my mother's favorite recipes. Tomorrow I will make breakfast quick bread because I like it and I want to eat it and that really is a good enough reason. I am hungry again, really finally hungry, in a way I haven't been for about a year. Tonight I still need to do something with the turkey breast, and I am thinking a lovely saute in a little butter and oil, with tarragon and sea salt. Maybe. I don't know.

And, the wedding night scene is starting to thaw out finally. A little. I may need more chocolate chip marble bar before I get it right. *wink*

World Peace and a New VCR

Why is October so frantic?!

I remember, when I was younger, that I would always have a test -- a major one, not just a quiz -- on my birthday. And that would be the kick off to Halloween parties, which means coming up with costumes and decorating, and then that bleeds right into Thanksgiving with all its major food prep and possible travel (miserable travel -- unless you fly on Thanksgiving Day and then it's a breeze!).

And then there's the headlong flinging of oneself towards Christmas.

I'll talk about The Holidays (dun-dun-DUN!!!) another time. For now, suffice it to say that October snuck up on me once again and I am at an utter loss for how to organize my time. There's a magic time in early September when I've got it goin' on: I've got the laundry done and the dishes done and the floors clean and the toilets sanitary and unsentient. The writing's done daily and in nice, productive 3-hour long blocks so I can write more than a sentence a day. My kids don't feel like their mother has abandoned them, and Mr MM is not walking around the house harrumphing for his fair share too.

And now it's October and all Hell's broken loose again.

Here's this week's list of Stuff I Really Oughta Do:

1. Finish cutting out/glitterizing Halloween decorations for the windows, so I can
2. Hang Halloween decorations around the house and in the windows.
3. Cook, a lot.
4. Laundry
5. Dishes
6. Floors
7. Toilets (notice toilets is #7? I hate that job too).
8. Write the wedding night for this poor couple*
9. Begin plotting the Christmas story I keep threatening people with.
10. Return phone calls
11. Return emails
12. Get in car, drive to store and find giftie for person in Ireland to whom I owe something very special -- I've been waiting for Christmas angels to get stocked. *wink*
13. Dig under couch cushions to find money to send Christmas angel to said Irish angel.
14. Deal with Mr MM's own ideas about what we should be doing this week, which will fatally randomize and destroy the above list.

*sigh*

It's 9am local time as I am finishing this entry.





*I did finish the wedding itself, and since that's the squeaky clean version of the situation, I did post that on the website the rest of the story is placed on -- to a really warm welcome -- thank you, everyone!!

But it's not here at Word Anxiety yet, because here I can post what I really meant, which includes their wedding night. Wedding nights in historical novels take time and care to write, because it is quite often the woman's very first time. I have two thoughts right now about this sort of thing: I have a responsibility to be believable, which means it will hurt her. It doesn't hurt because she's frigid. It hurts because she's never been stretched and hymens are tough and mean ol' buggers that require a little effort to breach. But, I am also a True Believer in the Good and the Beautiful, and that means he's going to love her enough to work himself senseless to make it as painless as he can. The lovely thing about writing this stuff is that, vicariously, I get to experience a man being a Man, meaning he's in the lead but also thoughtful and is paying actual attention to what's happening to himself and the people around him.

NEWS FLASH fellas! This is what women really want: your attention. Roses and chocolate and jewelry and lap dogs and fancy clothes and flashy cars are for you, so you feel like you're doing something. And that's not to say they aren't wonderful gestures that cost you a lot of money. They are, and bless you for remembering! But any woman really worth your time wants you to be emotionally and mentally available to her. Stay away from the sluts who only want what you can buy them. You want a woman who is genuinely interested in what you think and how you feel -- and she wants that level of interest in return. Otherwise, both you and she are wasting each other's time.

Ok, rant over. :)

Progress...or Not.

Today, I should be writing some couple's wedding, and it's just not happening. I have answered email, I have switched laundry, I have trawled around online, and contemplated making more bats for the windows. But wedding? Uh-uh. Not happening.

Maybe tonight or tomorrow, when my brain comes back after its many adventures...

Mucking About...

...and mucking out.

As you can see, I'm changing formats and templates and such. I'm also assessing myself -- always a dicey prospect -- and it's getting complicated. *sigh* Ok, ugly. There. I said it.

Anyway, don't be surprised at a few changes, though I will still be self-centeredly blathering about my own thoughts. That won't change. LOL

xx mm

Auto Pilot

Hi all.

This blog is currently on auto pilot.

Will be back online when I'm actually writing again...I hope. :)

xx mm

Saying stuff out loud so maybe I can actually do it

So in the interest of observing (ha!), I have been observing myself having a pity party the past four days or so.

I do have a tendency to feel sorry for myself, because let's face it, that's an easy thing to do. It's quick, it's doesn't cost any money, I can do it anytime anywhere. It's portable, tasteless, and doesn't induce allergies in myself or anyone else, and I can do it in public without anyone being the wiser. In fact, I've become very adept at making myself look like I'm not doing it even when I am. The problem is the cost in my confidence and my forward motion.

I'm figuring out it costs me everything.

Now, mind you, feeling sorry for myself is a normal response to disappointment, setbacks, fear and anxiety, bizarre encounters with people that I haven't made sense of yet (I'm having quite a few of those lately). I used to think all self-pity sessions were wrong, but I don't necessarily think they are anymore. I think it's something I need to keep in perspective and manage in moderation. Basically, this:

If my life is not stable and enjoyable the way it is right now, then I am allowed and really should have the good, solid cry I need to, lean on the safe shoulders I need to lean on, let people support and love me – but I don’t don’t don’t get to wallow in it. When the tears slow down, I need to get up and do something about it. I need to make a plan, even if that plan is halting and ill-informed at first. I can always modify it. But FFS stop feeling sorry for myself already, and then punishing everyone else when they don’t act like me and thus threaten my lazy system.

In practical terms, I need to own my terror of other writers, and then go out and encounter them anyway. I need to own my fear of failure, and then edit the manuscript anyway. I need to own that I loathe doing the laundry and then STFU and GBTW.

All of this is patently obvious, isn't it? Why do I keep going on about it? I keep going on about it, and I know it. I sincerely want this to be the last time I do it. I'm done. I may talk in the future about how dealing with other, more established writers puts the fear of God in me -- and it does! -- but enough already with the "Poor, poor me, I just can't do (fill in the blank)!" I'm getting on my own damned nerves.

So...writing plans. I have not one, but two Christmas stories rolling around in my head, and I think I really will start plotting those out while I work over the novel's manuscript. Nothing big, of course, just noddling with the ideas. The manuscript has rather large plotting issues itself, and that will take a lot of my time. I'm trying to decide whether it makes more sense to actually send the thing over to Kinko's to print, or just do it onscreen. I'll probably opt for onscreen just because printing a whole ream of paper's worth of manuscript is going to cost a small fortune. My plan is to just read the story, and make some notes to myself about problems I encounter, so I get a good feel for what needs work.

You know the thing is, I was going to say I didn't know if this was the right way to do it, and then I realized that, like most creative things, there isn't necessarily a right way. This isn't engineering, after all. That's a field with definite right and wrong procedures. This is art, and I can do it the best way I know how, and the universe will not grind to a halt. So there.

Time Out

Goodness, such lofty intentions, taking up a story again right away. Who the hell do I think I am? LOL

I'm coming down from having finished the previous story. The manuscript is 462 pages and 124,309 words and so I am going to call it The Novel now, because I kind of feel within my rights. "Novel," mind you, isn't some sort of indication it's any good, though I've been told it is. This is more my effort to dignify all the time put into this thing, and more importantly, the tears.

I did a very stupid thing, publishing this thing in real time, as I wrote it, but before I felt at ease with it as a whole. Not only does it need a lot of tidying, but I barely knew the story before anyone else did. When someone had questions or comments or critiques, I wasn't ready and neither was the story. That's not fair to anyone.

And it kills the joy of writing, burying it under the debris of analysis and judgment.

So I've spent some time today reading earlier stories I've worked on in private, things that I have no intention of showing anyone ever -- things that are safe. Safe is very good this afternoon. Safe allows me to see how much fun it is to play in these worlds with these people, to tell their stories as well as I can, and bear witness to all their hopes and dreams and fears and triumphs over failure. I'm nothing more than a grateful reporter here; this is the role I like to take when I write, even if I am human enough to want to know I did it well, so that the reader feels what I feel when I see these people struggle and win.

Now, admittedly in practical terms, this is bullshit. But putting myself in the role of observer and actress (writing fiction is, I think, acting on paper) helps get the Judgmental Asshole in my head out of the way enough for me to actually write. So I do this, and work under this assumption, and manage to produce stories. I won't tell the Asshole if you won't.

Instead I'll just keeping reading all my fun drabbles and stories and cheesy crossovers -- those are the best -- and try and restore the joy of what I'm doing in the first place. No more publishing before I'm ready, and no more sharing work because I want the deadline off my back. Isn't that why I left the office world in the first place?

It is. Time out. :)

So, the previous story is complete -- today was the first day I didn't have to get up and think about how to manage Robin and Chloe -- and didn't that feel weird after a year -- and now it's time to start thinking about which idea to tackle next.

Christmas!

Truthfully, I would love to do a Halloween story, since we're sort of but not really talking about holidays. But I just plain stink at scary stuff. My 'scary' always ends up being 'dreamy,' and that's just useless.

So I have had this Christmas idea kicking around in my head for about a year now, while I worked the other story, and I'm thinking I'd like to play with it a little and see if it's viable. A year ago I wrote a little stub for it -- the fun stuff, of course -- and when I re-read it, I was genuinely pulled in. Not bad for reading my own work! But it leads me to think maybe I can do something with the idea.

Dovetailing into that is the idea of writing a story through a series of letters. It just seems very intriguing to me, to follow someone's history through their own writing -- and then to use that as a means for fiction. Yes, I know I'm not the only person to think this up. Of course not! But it still sounds like fun and I still want to do it.

The harder part is taking what I learned on the last story and applying it here...mostly because I have no idea what I learned on the last story. I don't work that way. I just emerge places. I have all the same practical processes of a cone of cotton candy. Read: No Damn Idea. All I know how to do is sit and plot and write, and if that doesn't work, then sit and plot and write again. I sincerely don't believe anyone else does it very differently. Maybe just faster based on experience.

So anyway, it's going to be Christmas at least for a little while down here in the basement, while I figure out if I can make a really sweet story without making it really sappy or really maudlin or -- worst of all -- really cliched.

And what is with the dashes tonight? *sigh*

Done

It's done, and so am I.

I finished the practice story this afternoon, and considering I've been writing the ending scene for about a year now, I was pretty proud of it. I still am, actually. It was a hard set of things to work with, and no matter how I wrote it, it would never ever make anyone happy -- much less everyone -- and so I just did what I thought was best. I think, in the end, that's all I can do.

But I'm done.

I'm done with this story.
I'm done with these characters.
So I can finally be done with this anxiety.

I've been anxious for an entire year over this thing, because I see these characters in a way no one else seems to. Every single post was anxiety-inducing, knowing that these characters mean something different to everyone who reads them. No matter what, someone felt betrayed, because these characters come with too much baggage. No matter what I did, I was fighting to swim upstream.

I'm done.

For all of you who read the story, thank you for at least sticking it out until the end. I appreciate it more than you can know, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart. You gave me the space and support to practice when I badly needed it, and I will always be deeply grateful. Maybe someday, I will write something original you find entertaining enough to stick with again.

Those of you who think my ending is a betrayal, or that it sucked...maybe you're right. I can only tell the truth I see, and if it's not your truth, then I'm sorry. I truly am.

And just to reassure you: don't worry, I am never picking up these characters again.

In the meantime, I am off on a self-imposed vacation, after which I am returning to my original work. At least with that, if I suck, I can do it without all the inherent accusations of betrayal. The only person I'll be betraying is me.

I can live with that. I just can't live bearing everyone else's baggage anymore.

Update? Update? Bueller? ....?

Somewhere around here, in all this daily mess, is something worth updating about it. But I'll be damned if I know what it is.

I'll let you know if I find it.

Today's Haiku

Downward spiral starts.
Is it that time already?
I really hate this.


PMDD: It sucks, and I advise you have nothing whatsoever to do with it, if you can manage.

Time #1

I've been telling my readers that my delay in posting is the need to let my shoulder heal and all the anxiety around getting my younger one into school. I haven't lied to anyone either. My shoulder did go through a rough two weeks, and my daughter has been -- until the last three months -- frantically resistant to going to school. Working with her on this point has been a mind-numbing exercise in guesswork, until she finally decided that being a big girl with her friends was more exciting that being stuck home with Mom. But these two reasons are the surface reasons.

The deeper reason is: I'm scared.

I posted the last couple of chapters before I felt mentally ready to do so. At the exact moment of posting, they felt very ready. I felt very ready. And then in the morning I woke up with regrets, with "Aw, crap -- I forgot"'s, with a vague, relentless sense that I had let myself, my readers and the story down because the chapters hadn't been honed enough. Within this story, I have a lot of plates in the air now, many of them emotional. It's impossible for me to keep track of them all within the first couple of drafts. There's so much to consider now as we reach not only the end of the physical journey, but of the emotional one -- or really, at least a plateau the characters can work from.

I'm scared I will miss something important. I'm scared I will drop a major ball. I don't know how else to manage this but to write it slowly and carefully, so I don't. And that requires concentration and quiet and time -- something I'm kinda short on when my shoulder aches and I'm getting two kids into the new school year, and the spouse is convinced that once the kids are in school, I'll gladly keep the house spotlessly clean (there's a lot more to this issue, but for now I'm not going into it here). And so I can only do what I can do, which is how I've written this thing so far, and I'm afraid at this stage of the story it's just not enough.

I had performance anxiety before, but not anything like this. This is making not want to write it at all, until I have a sense that no one is actually looking and I can do this in peace. Frankly, I'm embarrassed and ashamed of the last couple of chapters. Action-wise, they are correct. What happens in them is what happens. But in terms of craft, I feel like they're crap. I feel like I'm going to drown in dropped balls and missteps and lost details. Things reviewing the story as a whole could catch, if only I'd done that. But it would have taken a year, and then who would have lost interest first: the readers, or me? I don't know. And I've learned more than I could ever detail by doing this. I can't regret learning what I have, or gaining the understanding and skill I have, that I didn't have at the beginning of this story.

I just feel, suddenly, like I'm screwing up. As I said yesterday, I'm not where I though I would be in the story. And now I feel out of sync with my own vision and I know it shows. I feel like I'm putting incomplete (read: imperfect) work out there because of my deadlines. I have that hamstringing feeling that If I Just Had Enough Time...Because in the end, this really is about the work not being perfect. Is anyone's work ever perfect? Do you suppose authors at the top of the NYT Bestseller list struggle with this sense too? I'm wondering if this what they mean when they say the work is never finished, it's just done.

Friday

I gave my arm a good rest this week, and it feels much better. I'm now typing again, and it's beginning to feel bad.

Damn it.

Onwards and upwards anyway -- my mouth is too big. The kids start school on Monday, and already I am baking gluten-free stuff for them to accommodate the first day. Kindergartners in Fang's class get to hunt around the school for a gingerbread man, and so of course I am now scrambling to find a viable recipe and make some up, without it looking like I'm doing this because it is supposed to be a surprise. I've got a late night ahead of me on Sunday.

Today will be my first contact with Pickles' teacher, since she's a fourth grader. There's not too much prep at that age, other than warning the teacher off about using flour tortillas for science projects and please FFS you really do need to tell me about classroom events so I can provide her with food, because no, it's not all right for her to have to sit there and watch everyone else have fun. Having a food allergy or intolerance does not automatically mean they don't get to have fun too and it just has to suck to be them.

Er...sorry. I've had some run-ins with care providers in the past,who were insulted that my child had the nerve to have a food issue on their watch -- like we owed the care provider a better immune system than that!

Why yes, I did tell her to take a flying leap, why do you ask?

Anyhoo, it's time to start all that up again. But you want to know something really nifty? The GF community has made such terrific strides is making the food industry aware of the condition and the diet that mainstream companies like Land of Lakes and Betty Crocker are now producing mixes and recipes and such. Yay!

The next step is to educate educators that YES YOU DO HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS. It's not an anomaly. And you think we have it bad? The kids with shellfish and peanut and soy allergies -- real, honest allergies -- are so much worse off. Poor kids can't even eat at the same lunch table as their friends. GF kids just need to not eat wheat, rye and barley. The kids severely allergic to peanuts can't even be in the same room!

Story-wise, I'm bogged. I'm seriously bogged down. This was supposed to be about a whole gang of people, and it's really come down to just two. I like it that way, and it apparently reads fine from what readers have told me, but it's not where I thought it would be. Weird, that. Stories have a way of working themselves out, but it's unexpected and maybe disappointing to a few people. I don't know. I guess I just have to finish it first.

I did read over a great deal of it, several chapters back, and it works pretty well until the latest ones. The problem here is that I have serious story fatigue and its beginning to show. So I am delaying posting and taking my time. But I can't work on it right now. I have a bum arm, kids starting school, and immediately right now, an office full of kids designing tombstones for the front yard.

Rar.

Monday

I was going to haiku this morning's entry, but my shoulder hurts too much to think that well.

The mystery of the house fire is solved: a 'flammable liquid' thrown at the house when the current owners weren't in residence. See, the thing about having a lodge in an area where everyone who lives there year round can hardly stay afloat, is that you are throwing your privilege in their face. No one likes to be treated like a stupid, penniless local. People take offense, and they get their revenge.

The a/c is allegedly being repaired today. If we don't see anyone by 10am this morning, we're getting on the phone until someone does show up. Meantime, I'm going to have to heat up the house by doing the laundry and dishes. I can't put it off any longer.

And the story, which I've had to put off for three days now while we escaped the house and the girls camped in my office because it's so cold down here? Maybe I'll even manage the story again.

For now, though, it's upstairs again for more ibuprofen. It would be nice if I could take this shoulder to a doctor. But I can't really afford to pay $25 for a 90 minute wait, all for the privilege of being told my insurance company doesn't believe treating this is medically necessary and so I can just go home and tough it out. Meantime, other people in other countries can go to the doctor without fear of being ripped off and know they will be dealt with fairly and their shoulders treated properly. Overseas I would be a patient. Here, I am a wallet with legs.

And that's all my politics for now.

Road Trip #1

So the air conditioning went out on Thursday night, and of course it did, because it's muggy and August and therefore completely unbearable here in the DC area. There's a good reason foreign governments have always considered DC a tropical posting for their diplomats. It just plain sucks to be here in August.

Naturally the a/c went out, and even better! The part necessary won't be available until tomorrow.

We've been sweating it out since then, which really means we're driving around a lot. The car at least has a/c. And so yesterday on this lark we ended up driving out to West Virginia to see my husband's family's old hunting lodge/vacation home -- and I use those terms loosely. It had a roof and four walls and a semi-operational bathroom and that's it. Not even potable water. But after 18 years of marriage, I had never actually seen the place. So why the hell not, on a day when it's too hot to stay home and too miserable to go anywhere outside? So we went. He hadn't been there in 25 years.

Like most things 25 years later, it was completely different. For one thing, it was burnt out. From the looks of things, a kitchen fire or a kerosene heater fire had taken out the entire backside and interior of the little house. It was abandoned, sitting forlorn and alone on its little hill. It was originally built in the 1920's -- we think -- a little four-square stuck on a shaved-off top of a hill, with a barn and fields on the other side of the little dirt road (now barely paved). All of that is overgrown. My husband says the barn collapsed while he was still being dragged up there on weekends, but what is now forest was once fields and ponds where he dug up the fossils that now litter our display shelves for them. Not everything that happened up there was boring and mildly threatening to a child.

The family friend who shot the furnace was, of course, but I digress.

The girls loved seeing this little piece of their father's history, so that they could get just that much of him into perspective. They peppered him with questions and made him tell stories until he was cross-eyed. It made me remember that we don't experience our parents as people until long after they have need of it, and that this is one of the cruel realities of parenting. You're everything to them, but you are also nothing. And it's necessary, so that they can become themselves unencumbered.

We're taking Grandma out to dinner today.

Spoke too soon!

First baby pumpkin spotted! Yay!

Yay! Yay! Yay!

Two Confessions

Want to hear the first one?

I love to garden. I love the smell of the dirt and the feel of it in my hands and planting the seeds and the plants growing all around me. I love seeing all the flowers and vegetables all blooming and ripe and ready. I love it.

Want to hear the other confession? I suck at it.

Oh, well. It makes me happy, and I keep trying, and so there you go. It is what it is. The worst thing of course is that cheesy metaphors are everywhere and it's almost required that I use this to make a Point about Something Important. Really, no. I'm not going there. I'm just thinking about this because I'm irritated that my pumpkin vines are only producing male flowers. The vine needs to produce both genders in order to get a pumpkin going, which probably says something about the nastiness of my so-called garden soil. Does fill dirt count as soil? Probably not. Thus, no punkins this year.

Figured out the snap pea thing though! That's a first for me, so there's something. That, and dwarf cukes. Not bad for a poseur who doesn't know what the hell she's doing.

The other reason I'm thinking about gardening today is that the Spouse is making noises about wanting to xeriscape the front yard. Now, we have a Colonial style house in a Colonial style neighborhood, white pickets fences and the whole 9 yards. Everyone else in the entire neighborhood has a grassy front yard of some disposition or another, because that's how it's done around here. This being a neighborhood with an HOA, we gotta do it how it's done or they gangs up on us and floods us a mailbox with Letters. So I'm casting around for ideas on how to make the Spouse's dream of never again using the $400 lawnmower come true, while also keeping the mailbox free of the dreaded Letters (I'm waiting for HOA's to discover the Howler -- then we're really bleeped). So, it's out and about on the IntarWeb to find formal Colonial garden ideas. I figure if we keep the requisite amount of grass on the yard -- there's always a Requisite Square Footage -- we should be able to get it down to weed-whacker-size so it's like, what...10 minutes of mowing? Swishy-swish and we're done.

Ironically (in the HOA's eyes, not ours), he wants to keep the backyard mostly grass so the kids have somewhere to play.

Should I talk about writing today? What's to talk about? The story has taken over my life, rules my every thought, and makes me really yell-y. And my shoulder hurts. I pulled something.

Ta-da! Updated.

Excelsior!

I'm having fun with a Superhero Catch-Phrase Generator this morning. It lets me say things like,

I am the Mighty Vitamin-Fortified Conqueror of Ill Will!

or,

I am the Robust Bio-Mechanical Power Drill of Vengeance!

Oh, yes. It's all good times from here.

Oh, I just want to sit and zone today. Just relax with a bottomless cup of coffee in front of the computer, and surf from blogs to Christmas Tree sites (we need a new one badly!) to fansites to Photobucket and back again. And then do it again.

Fat chance.

...

...

And if I add anything else here, it will just be complaining, or detailing nothing, so I'll just shush and get on with it. *wink*

Karma...

...sucks. I forgot to mention that this morning. But it works, and it sucks. *sigh*

Routine

So, today's the day I can no longer avoid it. I have to fish or cut bait with this practice story.

It is, conceivably, somewhere I can just leave it. The two leads are together. I can just stop if I want to. I might disappoint some people, but one's imagination can fill in the blanks by now, if that's what I need.

But I'm not sure it is. I think I personally might need to see this through to the end, to my own satisfaction. I know that I have finished a section of the overall piece, but I'm thinking that I need to go ahead and write the rest of what's lurking in my head.

While this might seem like a no-brainer, it's actually not. Because while I do this, I'm not writing original work, and therefore there is no hope for me to get paid.

On the other hand (there's always another one), with a little tweaking I could probably turn this into original work, and it's teaching me a lot about handling a large plot. So it's hardly time wasted.

You can probably see where this is going. I'll do it, but I think a bit more slowly and carefully. I've felt for the past several months like this story has become my life, and anything I do outside it is dream-time, to borrow a concept. It's just taken over everything I have, and I'm not entirely comfortable with that either. That is probably the biggest source of my disquiet: I have not created time to work on it and then time for everything else. No boundaries, no time management, no routine, no schedule. I'm really good at chaos. But I stink at creating routine. There is something about it both comforting and punishing, and I have no explanation for that outside of petty self-indulgence. Might as well call a spade 'a spade' and get on with fixing it.

So I'm trying to figure out The Routine this morning so I can finally get on with this thing. I've heard tell that routines actually stimulate the brain. This will be pretty much my first time, so I'll let you know.

Well, it didn't work. Didn't get the chapter really finished, and didn't manage the bathrooms or the vacuum either.

I did manage most of the chapter, and some dishes, and made some potato salad and did some laundry. I also kept a five year old and a six year old amused for the most of the day, went to the grocery store for potatoes (and I'll be going right back again today for the cilantro I forgot, and a turkey and a leg of lamb -- might as well pay the sales tax only once).

But I'm not getting into that 'groove', that sense of the story being something I'm documenting instead of making up. There is a sort-of otherworldly story zone I can access sometimes -- only, regrettably, tantalizingly sometimes -- that brings me so fully into the story that the thing will write itself. I looked for it yesterday.

But that's just not how the little bastard works.

No, it demands that I sit and zone doing nonsense things in front of the computer for an hour before it will peek out of my subconscious and let me in the Super-Secret Decoder Doorway to Magic, or whatever. In other words, I have to be relaxed to access it. And it's not relaxing when I have a few brain cells listening out for small children (who are painting and running in and out of the house with the paint on their feet) and a husband who works from home too, and the phone, and the dryer so I know it's time to fold 500 or so towels. But I'm too tired at night to write the way it really pleases me to write.

Lordy. I just read that over. Do you think I complain enough? I'm not entirely sure...

Anyway, today -- again -- I do have a plan: pick up my oldest from camp and listen to all her stories and see all her pictures and projects, and feed her. I don't expect to get to too much story today. Today is Pickles' big day.

:)

Aaannnnnddddd...

One helping of breakfast later and I'm feeling a little saner. Funny, how HALT works: Hungry? Angry? Lonely? Tired? For me, it's almost always hungry that does it.

Anyhoo, for anyone wanting to know, today is Day Two at the older one's summer camp, and I haven't heard from anyone about anything, even after the vicious thunderstorms of last night, so I'm very excited. I hope I hear only, or at least mostly, good things when we pick her up tomorrow morning.

Today's writing, like every other day's writing, is going to get done (if at all) in between five loads of laundry, two loads of dishes, four bathroom cleanings and the vacuuming of 2,800 square feet of residence. I have no idea how I'm going to accomplish that, because my usual instinct is to forget the housekeeping and do the writing. But there are people living here with me who feel it should be the other way around.

Which brings me to the idea of protecting my writing time. Actually, the appropriate question is, "What writing time?" I write in-between: In-between doctor's appointments, in-between grocery runs, in-between requests for snacks and meals and the need to put something in the dryer and the bathroom gaining sentience and attacking us. I write four or five sentences, and flip the burgers. I write two more, and help with homework. And so on. Of course my work would be better if it wasn't like this. But life has to be lived anyway, regardless of my ambitions. Instead of complaining, I thought I'd make a stab at working it out -- and I have no idea if I will feel this hopeful about it even tomorrow, or even this afternoon. I can only do what I can do, in this moment. For better or worse, that's how I operate because if I don't do it that way, everything spins loose.

So, with that in mind, today's plan is to pound out the rest of the current scene this morning, and then vacuum and do bathrooms. If I can manage that, I'll consider myself very accomplished.

There is another blog I like to read, not for the fabulous recipes, but purely for the author's attitude. Her keyword is Yes. I really like the possibility of Yes. Yes to getting all my stuff done today.

Today's Haiku

I've hit a big snag
Suddenly feel I'm rubbish
Writing anyway.

*snort* LOL

Showing my work to people has left me with a certain level of performance anxiety. I completely own that this is my garbage I need to learn to deal with. But it's left me a little (ok, a lot) nervous about actually doing the work and completing the story. I said I would never serialize again. What I now know I meant is, I will never again show anyone incomplete work.

What was I thinking?

I have that very typical anxiety: now that I'm getting to the end, what if people don't like it, and don't like the way I've written it? It's very beginner-ish, isn't it, to admit that? And another thing: That sounds pathetic. I know it. I know I need to just suck it up and work, and screw what people think. Well, we'll have to live with me being a big baby, then.

Basically, what happens in the story is what happens, irrespective of me, or the readers, or the guy down the street. That's just what happens. That's never the part I'm nervous about. I know what happens.

No, I'm having to adjust myself to acknowledge that other people also have ideas and expectations and hopes for the story. This is running up against my almost crippling emotional need to seem pleasant at all times -- because I'm insane, really -- and it's what's creating the performance anxiety. It's not that I begrudge anyone their opinion or the expression of it to their friends and neighbors if they choose. Hell, if they're talking about my story, they're at least talking about my story! As far as I am concerned they can knock themselves out!

But it is a new and somewhat withering atmosphere to work in. If I want publication I have to learn to deal with this. But maybe timing really is everything. I've shown unfinished work, essentially in its first draft, to a lot of people. I'm not ungrateful that they have fallen all over themselves to tell me how good it is, and how much potential it has. How can anyone be ungrateful for that? But when I lose confidence, I tend to worry that it will come across as though I'm not grateful, or I don't believe people, the implication being: if I don't take so-and-so's praise and live by it, I'm being a big jerk because I'm just a comment whore.

People, all writers are comment whores. So are actors and directors and painters and sculptors, even chefs. No one creates in a void. As I pointed out to someone the other day: specific praise is nice, but did you actually like it? Did it seem good to you?

I know what I was thinking. I was thinking I write too slow and that people would lose interest if they had to wait for the whole thing to be finished, or worse yet I would lose interest waiting for the whole thing to be finished. So I rushed chapters out there, and people have graciously told me they love it, and I grew rather addicted to that praise, and now there's the threat my fix won't ever happen again and--

Insane. Batshit Crazy. Now I understand the need to trust not only myself, not only my characters. I needed to trust them and me and my readers, that all three of us would show back up at the right time in the right way, if the story was compelling enough for all of us to do so. I'm not angry that I'm learning this lesson at this point, because what the hell -- at least I'm learning it. At least, I hope I'm learning it. Time will tell. No, I just wish things a little different.

I wish I wrote faster, and I wish I wasn't nervous.

It's Friday! Only two more working days til the workweek starts!

*snort* So you can see where my attitude is today. My oldest is about to embark on her very first trip to sleep-away camp. We drive her over on Sunday and pick her up on Wednesday, and I am already beside myself with worry. I should mention here that my children, and indeed the whole family, have Celiac Disease, which rather than burden you with Science, just means she can't eat wheat, rye or barley. In cafeteria terms, this can be a nightmare. The camp people have assured me they can handle special diets and so we've decided to trust them at their word.

That, and there's a salad bar at every meal.

A little cross contamination won't do too much damage; she's been gluten-free for 7 years now and is as healthy as a horse. She can manage all right and they'll call me if she gets really sick. They sort of have to! But I'm not going to deny her a normal 9 year old's existence because her digestive system works a little differently. And as she grows we both have to learn to handle these situations anyway.

So it's off to the store for flip-flops for the showers at camp, and finding flashlights and arranging rides to the camp and all that stuff. My equally brilliant younger one is just glad the sister will be out of the way for a few days. As long as she has someone to play with, she couldn't really care less. No jealousy, at least not until we start to drive away. Then, yeah. Probably!

And the Celiac thing is a nice way to avoid my real fears, the ones all moms get, that our babies will not have a fabulous time and will come home in tears because the other girls were mean or just exclusive or our children just didn't really hit it off with anyone. Having been that daughter myself, who wasn't cool and wasn't popular and didn't know how to make friends easily, my daughter's upcoming trip is dredging up all of my stuff.

My older daughter is a social diamond. She's the kid the teachers put new students next to, because she is compassionate and funny and loves meeting new people and being helpful and kind. She is f'ing brilliant, is my kid! And she'll do just fine at camp. The only wreck here is me. She'll be fine. I'll be fine. It'll be fine.

Just fine.

Herbs and Break Time

So today's project is designing one of my character's pharmacopoeia.

I've hit this point in the practice story where I can reasonably break it off into another chunk. I think, if I'm going to tell a story about approximately 10 years of a person's life, I need to break that down into manageable chunks. So I sort of envisioned it as a trilogy, and I think I can safely start us off on Part 3 now. of course I haven't mentioned that yet. There is the small part of me not so sure. But the Journey part of the story is really over now, so there's no point in hanging around in a story with that title. I don't know. It'll work out as I write it, I guess.

Meantime, one of my leads is an herbalist whose skills are about to come into play, so I am having to drop everything for a couple of days and look some stuff up. It's also a nice break from actually writing prose. My brain is feeling a little rickety narrative-wise. I know what happens next, but I'm a little worn out for getting that on the page. I don't know why either, unless Julia Cameron is right and sometimes the well runs dry. Either way, I can't write a character knowing her herbal business if I don't have at least a rudimentary understanding as well. Nothing huge, mind you. I don't need to train as a homeopath. Just enough that I know not to have her give some well-known poison as a cure!

I'm reminded of the late, great Rodney Dangerfield, who when asked if he would leave the hospital soon after his heart surgery, noted that if it went badly he'd be out fastest of all. Bless him, he was right, too.

So I'm trying to put together a cheat sheet for myself as a way of drilling this somewhat dry information into my head. It's interesting, but I'm having trouble retaining it because there are no human beings involved. My mom called me right: I only care if there's a body attached. A clinician, I'm not.

Onward, the power of the internets! And, um, some books and stuff too!

And one non-sequiter little zinger courtesy of the late Paul Lynde: asked if one tips in a motel the same as a hotel, he asked, "For half an hour?!"

Go watch old 'Hollywood Squares' episodes and enjoy for yourself.

Snappy title here...when I think of one.

What follows is my own personal version of a pep talk. I have no idea why I have the insatiable urge to say this to myself in public, but I do. Just bear with me. What the hell, it's my blog after all...

I love being a martyr.

I don't mean it in the sense of getting myself blown up so I can enter Heaven faster. No, I like the psychological martyrdom, that allows me to crawl up on a Cross while not actually doing anything worthwhile with myself. Specifically, the kind of intellectual maneuvering that allows me to think I'm trying to achieve something, when in fact I'm hamstringing myself by setting up goals that are too lofty, or by making clearly ludicrous assumptions about how my background leaves me unsuitable to write.

Listen, if part of Tom Clancy's prep was selling insurance out of his garage -- and trust me, he did -- then surely as a former business writer I've got a shot too.

It's taken me 25 years, but I have finally managed to acknowledge that I am more frightened of success than failure. If I succeed at something, then I have to step up my game again, and work again, and risk failure again. Holy crap, I have to do it all over again!

But if I insist that everything I do means nothing, then I never risk my efforts actually meaning something. If I insist that I have no skills, then I never risk that I do have them and that I'm wasting them needlessly. Worse, this mindset allows me to ignore that as I practice doing things, I can actually get better at them. Hell, some things may even get easier!

Admittedly a lot of things won't, damn it.

But when I insist I can't do something, for whatever creative reason I cook up, I don't have to discover whether I am right or wrong. I can just martyr myself to my fear and stay cozy. Mmmmm...cozy.

I'm not too proud to admit that's a viable option. It really is. I can be just as good a person deciding not to pursue this as I will be if I do. Of course, I will be an unpublished person, and that's enough to make me think twice. I don't want to get to the end of my life and have my only accomplishments be changed diapers and a mean chicken enchilada (no, it's really mean -- I can't work out the heartburn thing yet). I just...I don't want discomfort and I don't want calcification. So something has to give and I think for today it's the refusing-to-fail thing.

On My Mark...

In four and a half weeks, both of my children will start school again. All day. Six hours.

I'm excited.
I'm scared.
I'm really excited.
I'm afraid of jinxing it!

I don't know of a single mother of young children who does not anticipate this day, when they will have a real break from tending. Certainly there are other things that will demand attention; I'll no longer have those two handy excuses for not doing all the laundry hanging around. But for me, there's an extra bonus.

I get to go 'back to work'.

I'm rushing to finish up at least the last chunk of the practice story, so that I can leap right into some original work come the start of school. I'm determined to make the most of my time. I have other chores that need tending, and I'll no longer have an excuse not to do them. That's ok. But the last time I had really good chunks of available time, I wasted them, and I have carried that regret for nearly ten years.

I am determined not to make that mistake again.

A friend of mine pointed me in the direction of an author, who's work I've come to not only love but very much respect -- and by respect, I mean 'become thoroughly intimidated by'. This amazing author just won a RITA for her work, which is basically the Oscar of romance fiction.

I suspect anyone who seriously contemplates writing romance fiction wants a RITA. Are you kidding? Of course! Of course I want to be considered that good by my peers. But I am actually finding that I want the work, the long hours, the endless revisions -- I genuinely want the process, as well as the rewards. For the very first time in my life, I want the actual work. Somehow I managed to let go of (or maybe just stuff) at least some of the intimidation I've always felt, or maybe just always indulged in, so that I enjoy the work almost more than I enjoy fantasizing about winning awards.

Now admittedly, in the middle of February in a snowstorm in the basement at 4am, I may feel less enthusiasm than I feel writing this. Then, I'll probably enjoy the fantasizing more. Probably a lot more.

But anyway, I won't get there without doing the actual work, putting words on paper and trying to piece them into something entertaining. And in 4 and a half weeks, I'll get six hours a day to do exactly that. It's not too much to say I'm all a-tingle with the idea.

Wow!

New Boxes!

Well, the move never happened. And I'm getting a newer, faster machine.

Does this mean, complain and it shall be rectified, which -- let's face it -- is a much more honest version of Ask and Ye Shall Receive?

I have no idea. What I do know is that within an hour of posting last, Mr MM piled into the family car with a brand-new CPU, and announced that since my machine was so slow and he needed a new, faster box anyway, he was going to take the parts from his about-to-be-old machine and build a new box for me.

Thank you, Mr MM!

The move was, initially, another matter. No hardware for the curtain rods for the curtains that had to be in place before the move took place due to the nature of Mr MM's equipment. In all seriousness, no one wants the public to see into their house. So, all-stop until hardware is located.

And then today we discovered that his new box doesn't put out even half the heat of the old one. His office is easily 15 degrees cooler today, and no change in the summer weather, so that's not it. It's definitely the cooler new box.

Hmmmmm...

So I'm back to work on the story.

Moving Day

So I'm getting thrown out of my office this weekend.

Mr MM's own office gets too hot, with all his monitors and boxes and whatnot. It is a very small room and it does get pretty miserable in there. I don't begrudge him that.

My office, on the other hand, is in the nice, cool, albeit dank and somewhat animal-smelling basement (previous owners had at least a dog, but I swear to you on a hot day, I'm smelling hamster or guinea pig down here). So that left us with -- Dear God! -- choices. Do we share an office? Do we switch offices? Do we just suffer with the situation as is?

Four things were decided upon by both of us:

1. I type too loudly to be forced upon anyone.
2. Stifling heat trumps occasional Eau de Hamster.
3. Mr MM gets the cooler office because he's the one currently pulling down a paycheck by using any office.
4. Since I type too loudly, I have to find other space in the house because no one wants to hear me type upstairs at 5 in the morning and I don't want to hear anyone bitching at me about it.

So, out I go. I'm not happy about being the one with the slowest computer in the least private amount of space in the house. I would really prefer to have a reasonable spot here to call my own. I think that's the smallest amount of respect my ambitions deserve: not to be tossed around like it's a drugstore puzzle I sometimes work on. It's hard, confronting the fact that no one but me in my own family takes this seriously -- even if I concede that after talking a good game for 15 years, I finally feel ready.

But I do owe everyone involved that confession too. I didn't take it seriously for a long time. I can't expect anyone else to take my work seriously when I don't.

So I'm sucking it up and moving offices. I've worked in the corners of dining rooms and the end of kitchen tables, and a lot of time in offices spent doing everything but my job. I think I can just shut up and write in the basement too. It will mean adjusting my schedule, but oh well. Better to just get on with it and actually get the story cranked out. In the end, it seemed to defeatist to bitch and moan about the Dire Symbolism of the Office Exchange. I suspect it's better to use my time more wisely, and with any luck, I'll get my &*%$ together and actually do it.

One More Thing:

It's my understanding a nice Merlot goes well with all this whine.

Dump

This is where I am supposed to put an entry, but I don't know what to say. I'm having trouble thinking, and thinking things through.

For instance, I could talk about how the overbearing parts of me got hold of me again, and I tried to help a friend way, way too hard, and ended up hurting her feelings when I meant to soothe them. Now I'm stuck trying to find a way to apologize without opening the wound further. Even worse, it's just made me feel overbearing towards myself instead of anyone else. I have very little confidence in terms of friendships anyway, because I am a very intense person by nature and I naturally drive people away with my intensity. I know this, and sometimes I'm helpless to control it. One the one hand, I am as I am. On the other, after 40+ decades walking the planet you'd think I could learn to shut the *&%#% up.

Nope.

So that's one stressor.

I could talk about how my youngest started a summer session of school last week, and it's been a roller coaster helping her understand that when it's time to go to school, we have to go. It's not an option. I enrolled her in this School Sneak Preview because I knew this would come up. My youngest deigns to allow us to raise her; she would like everyone -- and I mean everyone -- to know that she is in fact a royal pixie who hails from a realm far less mundane and annoying than this one, and she is quite certain she shouldn't be forced to follow this one's boring and encroaching rules if she's in the mood to do so.

Montgomery County Schools doesn't agree with her, and neither do her mundane and annoying parents.

I could talk about how the entire industry my spouse works in is going belly up and we're horribly financially compromised by the fallout, and how we are on pins and needles throughout every month because we don't know if we'll get paid.

Actually, I can't. I'm not allowed. But I'm stressing a lot over that too. And in case you're wondering, internet stays on in this household because the spouse uses it to make and maintain contacts. It's a tool I get to use too, not a luxury.

This is on top of the regular stuff, like the new glasses that are so different I'm nauseated, or the fact that I can't figure out what everyone will actually eat for dinner because I have a houseful of foodies living on a ramen noodle budget. Did I mention the copious food allergies requiring expensive, special ingredients? My laundry is piled up and my dishes are piled up because I can't concentrate long enough to do more than the minimum. And yes, I'm lazy too. I'm pretty open about that.

Oh, and one more thing. Children and their friendships and where they will play for the afternoon are a constant source of compromise, and in my case, extreme guilt. I never feel like I am on an equal footing with any mom, because my spouse's environment allergies are so severe we can almost never have other kids over -- too much scented shampoo, conditioner, laundry detergent on other people, and the spouse has a migraine and a nosebleed. So my children play everywhere, and their friends have to be shown where they are, which leads to kids wandering all over the neighborhood, and I feel awful. But I'm between a rock and a hard place, and I have to endure other moms thinking I am a jerk, because people really don't understand, and I have to do it so that my home life is not a nightmare. I'm doing that dance today too.

None of this has to do with writing, obviously, and so no writing is getting done. I can't write when I think it's a job. Unless I feel like I can safely be sucked into what I'm creating, I can't create. So nothing about writing and what I think of it today. I don't have the stamina, and I have way too much guilt.

A Short Addendum

Just an addition to last night:

I will seek out those comments again -- as I did just this morning -- and I will feel devastated when they are less than dazzling -- which they were just this morning. And every time they are, I will indulge myself in thinking I can't write anything and I need to stop embarrassing myself. Just like I am this morning.

Praise, as an ointment for neediness, is its own addiction. And as anyone knows, to stop the addiction, one has to stop indulging in the triggers for it. My focus, my reasons for doing this, have gone cockeyed, and despite my best efforts, I'm writing for the praise and not to tell the characters' story. And when I just tried to wrench that back: no praise and thus plenty of self-doubt on my part.

This is both grueling and stupid, and self-destructive. Enough already.

I Suck, Part 2

I have to be honest with you: I've been a little reluctant to blog lately. So I'm outting myself.

I'm aware that a lot of my posts here have been about being nervous and upset and hacked off and then nervous again. In fact, I think I just covered the whole blog. But it does leave me longing to name the good stuff about working my way towards being a "real" author -- you know, "real" as in, I get paid for it. Why won't I name the good stuff?

I get good comments back. I would be some kind of s**thead if I didn't acknowledge that. I get really good comments back. I get pages of "brilliant chapter!" and "I'm hooked!" and "I can't wait for the next chapter!" -- all about a story that effectively buries the original heroine. That is not bad, if I do say so myself. Pretty damned good beans.

So why am I still so nervous? And why am I cursing so much, which you're not seeing because this thing has a delete button and a * button?

At a certain point, I think the rest of the universe gets tired of my nerves and my conviction that the next chapter is the one in which I'll drop the ball and be found out as a fraud. That is how I feel, you know. Just over the ridge, in the next chapter, my characters will do something so bats**t that it will be clear I've been faking this all along, and I have no business doing anything artistic whatsoever, and I'm really a horn-rimmed glasses wearing geek who lurks in the basement down the street.

You'd only be wrong about the glasses -- they're silver.

But that gets on people's nerves after a while. How often can you reassure a person before you're out of reassurance? The only thing left on the shelf is resentment. I can feel myself becoming a black hole of neediness, and I'm getting on my own nerves with it. I resent me for it, so why won't I let it go?

I cling to the concept of myself as a failure and an incompetent. But I'm not a failure and I'm not incompetent. I'm green all right, greener than Greeney McGreen in the month of Green. But I am not incompetent. So why hang out in that worldview anyway? What am I getting out of it that I don't think I'll get out of success and a new, bigger, meatier set of goals?

I'm not dumb, folks, and I know the answer: it feels safer and it's easier if I suck.

Oh, yeah. You see, if I suck at this, I never have to do any real work. I can just noodle around, and toy with things, and never really make myself uncomfortable with, you know, thoughts or even worse, effort. Eee, gad.

If I suck, then I don't have to risk thinking I don't and then being corrected -- that's a really scary one. Who wants to think they're some genius only to be handed their ass in the first minute?

If I suck, then I never have to learn how to deal with winning graciously, which is a surprisingly difficult position to be in. That brings up a whole new set of "What if I do it wrong?" anxieties.

And so on and so forth.

I realize this is not rocket science and it takes maybe half a firing brain cell to figure all this out. Of course what I'm doing is threatening. And I suspect, if any of you are left here by now, you're bored witless with my moping over my poor pathetic sense of threat. Poor me -- only 8 billion of my closest pals in the same position. I know.

And here's the really funny part: it's probably as easy -- and difficult -- as just soldiering on, and doing the work and getting the critiques anyway. Like Winter Warlock, I need to put one foot in front of the other. I probably don't need to walk like that, though. I hope not! But what I hate about this is that's the solution. Just Do It.

And while we're here, why do I want to moan and analyze too? Because that's easier than actually shutting up. I know it; it's the difference between mere activity and actual productivity. I let myself mistake one for the other. Obviously I'm not really good at shutting up -- hence, a blog about me. But I have got to let go of this neediness, this demand that everyone else but me fill in my sense that I can do this if I really want to. I keep demanding that other people give me permission to continue by gushing over every damned comma. This has to stop. It's both disrespectful and banal of me. Predictable and shallow and even abusive.

And there is no snappy way to label this insight. I just need to stop it, and respect my readers enough to rely on myself for some support. Their job is to read, and if I did my job, enjoy. My job is to just shut up and do my job, so they can do theirs.

I Think I Love Haiku Now

Well, that was stress relieving in a way I hadn't expected! If we were allowed to do this kind of haiku in class back in the day, we probably wouldn't have fought it so hard! Got another one, to explain yesterday's:

I am acting out
I really need to grow up
But not right now, thanks.

Back to work on the story! LOL

Frustration Haiku

Because, what the hell? Why not?

Know what I’m doing?
Clearly, I have no idea.
Weary of it now.

*sigh* We'll see how I feel in the morning.

Getting Over Myself

Ok! All right, already!

Yes, I feel better and I'm over myself again. Yeesh. I should really just relax, you know. The comments on the story pieces turned out to be all good after all. A little meh in some places, but that's ok. I knew some of that would be coming, because my characters are making big life decisions, which they should, and not every reader can agree with them. I need to have a little respect for that, and then get over it already. And myself!

Meantime, I am thinking a lot about craft, not because I enjoy it so much -- well, not strictly true. I enjoy it per se, but having to think about areas of my craft that need developing makes me think that all my craft needs a lot more developing than I like to admit and starts that cascade of "If I'm not perfect, then I clearly must stink" line of thinking I'm so prone to. I loathe having to admit I might be a beginner in any area and I really loathe falling on my rear in public, either figuratively or literally.

But I have a dear friend who's an editor, who very gently sprinkles suggestions through some of our conversations. She does this not because she thinks I'm awful at this, but because she really believes in me. She is a dear, dear friend, who instinctively knows how to handle an under-confident, eggshell ego like mine, and I can't say enough good about her. She cares, and I'm slowly realizing I'm getting hints that I need to go read up on a few things to improve my game even more.

Ugh.

I think I better do it after I finish the practice story. I'm afraid I will end up reading all these things, having a sudden burst of insight...and then I will see everything going wrong right now in the practice story and want to rip it to shreds and start over. I don't want to go down that rabbit hole, bluntly. I'm so close to the end of the practice story -- and so much of it is already being read by friends in serial form -- that I think it's better to just finish it up and then educate myself. At least, that's today's thinking. This way I don't distract myself from the work that might actually count as part of a career; it makes no sense for me to endlessly polish a work I can't even publish.

And meantime-meantime, Happy Fourth of July, America!

I Suck

Well. I've just had my first taste of what it feels like when the readers don't agree with what the characters have chosen to do. No, let me amend that. I'm pretty sure I have readers who don't even agree the characters would make these choices.

Tears, recriminations and self-righteous fury aside -- and there's a lot of that, let me assure you -- I'm trying to decide if this is, in fact, a positive thing. None of us agree with the people in our lives all the time, and quite often we believe they're behaving like idiots and don't know their holes from rumps in the ground. Is it a good thing that my readers are involved enough to think the same of the characters or me? I'm thinking maybe of the characters, but never me -- or is it that I am the same thing as a character to my readers, since I create and allegedly control the characters?

Hint: I don't control them. I'm just the reporter here.

The hard part is, I am really proud of those chapters now being questioned. I worked hard on them, and I know this is how these two people would react to the situation they find themselves in. I know it, and given that the story resides in my head, I think I really do get to claim expertise here. So it hurts tremendously that my readers don't agree. I'm getting questions and concerns and sneers even. And yet I get to do this with other people's work. And sometimes, my questions are good things that make me see the characters as whole people and not just extensions of my own self. Isn't that good?

I have no insight right now. I wish I could say I did -- that's sort of the point here -- but really, I don't have a lick of insight. I'm just reporting.

And reassessing where I post this thing again.

Series vs Singletons

Remind me never to serialize a story again. Never.

I've decided I'm not enjoying my new-found closeness with the reading process. I hate the days when I post -- Comment Day. It's a nerve-wracking nightmare, is what it is.

I suspect authors who release their stories as whole units, all at once, do not endure this. I long for that, to just write the story and do all the necessary drafts and then just give it over as a fully formed piece. Not that I would walk away per se, but I would not be forced into the constant see-saw of first draft jitters -- completion relief -- comment jitters. It's really getting to be tiring, doing it this way.

But I don't want to be a quitter either. All my writing life, when continuing on got threatening or even boring (yes, let's all admit it -- it happens), I threw in the towel. I can't bring myself to do that this time, frayed nerves or not. I don't owe it to the readers half as much as I owe it to me to just finish this thing.

So I guess I better get my chores out of the way, huh? LOL But I'm never serializing again!

Unblocked

So I am unblocked and the story is up and running again. This is good! I can sleep again. My headaches are gone!

Yay.

Blocked

I still have writer's block. I only get this when something's intimidating me. And there's so much to choose from right now!

Is it the fact that I'm near the climax of the story, and fairly certain that many readers will not like where I'm going after all? I've certainly given them enough indications of where I am going with this. If this actually happens, I can't say I won't be pissed off. Maybe that's not fair of me, but I did say I would wear my heart on my sleeve here.

Maybe it's that I am afraid that the big emotional climax will fall short, that the climax will be no climax at all. Put more succinctly, I'm afraid I'll screw it up.

Or maybe it's my actual life getting in the way, the one where my school-averse 5 year old has to start school anyway soon enough, and she's going to be a holy terror about it, and it will start 12 years of school conferences in which I will have to fend off her teachers' attempts to diagnose her as something they can medicate -- simply because she is a girl who does not need their approval to feel good about herself. Girls are expected to be approval hounds, so they can usually be counted on to tow the line and play the game. But my five year old is not like other five year olds. She is far too self-possessed to need some older stranger's approval, thank you. She doesn't play games and she doesn't tow lines. So, yeah. This will be fun.

Clearly, I'm feeling intimidated, and angry, and self-important, and sorry for myself, and a host of other negative things. Did I mention obsessive? That too. I need to take a break, but I also need to wrap this up. So this morning I'm not sure which way I want to solve this. But I have had a headache for 4 days now, so this obviously can't continue. I did try writing again this morning, like every morning this week, and like every morning this week I felt like I did two years ago when I started: everything felt clunky and weird, like i had someone else's shoes on.

I'll let you know what I come up with as a solution, if it's anything other than just shutting up and writing anyway. I think it'll be that, though. Boring, but necessary. And intimidating.

Re-focusing

Dang it.

I meant to update this daily. I really did. But this week sort of got away from me.

I haven't written anything, so already I feel funny. And then the fandom for whom I'm writing this little story exploded over a piece of news that puts my story effectively out of business.

Now, I knew this little development was coming, and for my own peace (piece?) of mind I will finish the story, though I'm not really sure when yet. Right now, only dribbles are coming to me, when it was a flood previously. But you see, the Canon-Keepers of the fandom killed the heroine, and my story deals with that aftermath, and now they are bringing the heroine back. Never mind the bait-and-switch nature of all this. This development means my work here is not done, it's just irrelevant. Not that the story wasn't alternate-universe anyway, but now i feel like my own heroine is at risk of being reviled for not being the Canon heroine.

And that I am even in this position is just dumb.

I think it's time for me to return to that original novel, and gather in all my ideas for other novels, too. To that end I have pulled the old research books and begun re-submerging myself in that milieu, trying to work out the problems encountered in the first draft. I must say, it's far more satisfying than walking on eggshells all the time around this fandom.

For the record, it's not all the time. But around this one character? Oh, yeah. Eggshells in between land mines laced with trip wires connected to shrapnel-filled pipe bombs. On a good day.

I don't like wasting my time, I don't deserve to be dogpiled for having my own opinion instead of someone else's, and this is just a show! So for the moment, I am returning to my real life and just lurking everywhere else. Hopefully I will be able to update this more often as progress -- real, honest progress and not just defocusing! -- gets under way.

Success vs Damnation

So I updated the story this weekend, on Saturday, and my regular readers were wonderful about it. They really seem to love the story. One person called it 'pure magic'!

Can you imagine? That sound you hear is me bouncing with excitement!

But I'm putting it this way for a reason, if it sounds like I don't believe them. Of course I believe them, that this is what they think of the story. And yet...I have trust issues. Not that I don't trust the readers, and I most certainly trust the characters. That's the funny thing, I just realized. I have a friend who is worried about not getting to know her characters, but it occurs to me while I'm typing here that the real issue for me -- I don't know about her -- but the real issue for me is that I have to trust them to know themselves. Get out of their way and let them do their thing.

My trust issues are all around two things. First, I don't sit down believing I can replicate the previous level of work. I have learned to trust, a little, that I will know what the characters do next when I start to let them do it. And I have learned to trust that I will know when I am forcing my solutions on them, instead of letting them work it out on their own, so I will know when to rip out clunky passages. Now I have no idea if any other person who ever attempted to write feels this way. I just know this the working method I can manage. But what I don't trust is that I will ever be able to weave this alleged magic again, that I will sit down one day and suddenly be writing not a novel but an insurance report.

My biggest trust issue, though, is believing that I can have this level of success and praise, and not somehow be damned by having it. That, I think, is a particularly religious way of looking at things -- ironic in that I am not a particularly religious person. But I was raised in a family that was very traditional in this sense, and this is what it's left me with:

Enjoying success = eternal damnation

So when people compliment me, I cringe. I really do. It's easy for me to say I'm sure I don't deserve it, but the blunt f'ing truth is, sometimes I'm pretty damned sure I do. Some of these chapters I'm very proud of, and I fiercely resent this overwhelming fear I carry, that it's inherently wrong of me to be proud of them. Conversely, I recognize that this isn't a very healthy attitude either. I just don't yet know what to replace it with. In the meantime, I'm opting for thanking people profusely, which seems appropriate anyway, because no one owes me an ounce of comments. It's good and kind of them to make the effort at all. I just wish I didn't crave the comments and loathe my reaction to them at the same time.

Yeesh, what a whiner I am.

Silence is Golden

And, it's also very telling.

Like when your children suddenly go silent in the house, and you wonder, "Do I investigate in case they've drawn blood or gone unconscious? Or do I just enjoy it while I can?"

Yes. Silence is indeed golden.

Deconstruction and Assassination

Hello all. I realize this is outside the usual scope of my blog, but I feel strongly that this needs to be said.

I have only a few literary passions, and one of them is Robin Hood. Robin is one of those timeless characters in literature, a Everyman who sets his own needs aside in the service of others, who shows us through his actions that the letter of the law and the spirit of the law are sometimes two different things, who demonstrates through his own sacrifices that being a good person is not only possible, it is within everyone’s reach -- and you can have a spanking good time of it too.

So if you're familiar with the current series on BBC One, you can imagine my horror at it.

This version of Robin Hood has been very deconstructionist in nature; at this juncture, it appears its sole purpose has been to “knock” Robin Hood “down to size”. Certainly this is in keeping with Foz Allen and Dominic Minghella’s original promise that this would be a Robin Hood we had never seen before.

Funny how I thought they’d mean that positively.

This is NOT a post about how awful Guy of Gisborne is, or the terrible things he has or has not done, or how he deserves to pay for his crimes. I’m NOT here to vilify him, or to vilify actors Richard Armitage or Jonas Armstrong. Truthfully by now, both Robin and Gisborne can polka their way to the finale for all I care.

No, my problem is that Gisborne’s redemption is coming at the cost of Robin’s good character. This is wrong. If you are a fan of this series, please step outside the show for a minute and look at the overall issue. You see, I’m unclear on the purpose of a production that focused on the destruction of a cherished hero to millions. Yes, of course it’s new and different – so is arsenic the first time you taste it. That doesn’t make it a decent idea. Frankly it feels to me like I’m stuck in my local pub with that old guy who hates everyone and won’t leave. I don’t understand what reasonable story-purpose there was in destroying Robin this way.

Please let me anticipate you and point out that Guy of Gisborne’s story could have been told, and told well, without making Robin his villain. It is enough, truly heartbreaking enough, to know that he was turned out of his home as a boy and left to fend for himself in a world that would only value him if he held property. That alone is a tremendous backstory, just as knowing he put his sister Isabella into a clearly unsafe marriage just for his own gain. You could have made a series out of those two facts alone. Robin’s destruction is not necessary.

But to make Robin himself the cause of all this backstory is entirely different. Towards this end this series has made a caricature of Robin, as someone who is only arrogance personified – and nothing else. Gone is the Robin Hood of legend. Instead this series has steadily marginalized Robin Hood, by replacing the real Robin with a self-absorbed thug bent on achieving his own brand of power regardless of the cost to others, as if being outlawed is the easy route to fame, fortune and conquest. Again, it’s new and different, but that alone doesn’t make it a good idea.

It is true that making Gisborne all bad is poor storytelling and therefore he ought to at least have a chance at redemption, regardless of whether he takes it. That chance can be obvious or subtle, but to balance the scales and make Gisborne human, the chance must be available. Any character who lacks self-discovery through these chances is just poorly drawn.

And thus by the same token, making a one-dimensional character out of Robin Hood – turning him from a man who wrestles with his desires and does for others anyway, into this unrecognizably violent and impulsive brute – is also poor storytelling. Worse, it’s character assassination. Such a serious change requires a clear rationale, but there is none given, as if we are to believe in spite of all we have seen and heard that Robin has always been this way.

Again, step outside the details of this show. The only themes or ideas I can take away from this are that I can’t trust heroes, that people who put themselves in harm’s way for others are actually cynical ego-maniacs, that every man who ever tried to do something nice for another is actually in it for himself, for his own ego gratification or perhaps to assuage his guilt because he’s secretly a thug, and that all great inspirational legends are just a pack of lies.

Why is that old guy at my local pub so threatened by anyone who gives freely of himself? Perhaps he is threatened because he feels he could never be so selfless. Perhaps rather than aspire to the same selfless behavior, he finds it easier to bring down those who can put others first, by denying that they even exist, by spreading lies about their true motives, and by mocking those who would aspire to selfless deeds.

I find this alarming, because it tells me just how many people in this world do not believe any of us are capable of good. I’m unnerved by how many people are that old man. Please set aside loyalties here – I would be just as disgusted if this had been done to Michael Praed’s Robin, or Kevin Costner’s, or Richard Greene’s. It’s just wrong to do this, to destroy one hero to create another. Two heroes can exist at the same time – and for God’s sake all of you out there about to tell me they both will be heroes in the final scenes, please don’t. That is simply not what’s happened here. The frightened old men behind this production have dragged Robin Hood through the mud, repeatedly, simply to create a second hero, and this was never necessary. Were Gisbourne inspired by Robin, instead of allegedly brutalized by him, then the legend would remain heroic. Smearing Robin this way something very ugly about human nature and benefits neither the story nor any of the characters.

This series has turned the entire legend on its ear, turning Robin Hood’s pure motives into the twisted idea that he is only in it for the glory and to assuage his own guilt over actions the real Robin Hood would never have committed in the first place. Robin Hood was never that man, and never needed to be that man, and so I don’t understand why this series felt it had to assassinate his good name this way.