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.