Archive Tag:saying ‘so fucking what’ to your inner critic

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Drabble 109 – Revirescent

Revirescent

I have news.

The day I got the email from Adria asking me if I’d be interested in working on this book was the same day I got rejected for a job I really wanted, a job that would give me health insurance and regular work in a time when those two things were hard to come by. I’d just left the company I’d been with for two years, hoping I’d be able to make it on my own in freelancing. I had yet to sell or even pitch anywhere as a freelancer, and was seriously considering going back to school because everything in December of 2016 was so incredibly uncertain that I thought some stability might help.

Since then, I’ve published my first piece as a freelancer (it’s on white supremacy in Harry Potter, and you can read it in the current issue of Bitch Magazine). I’ve pitched elsewhere and been both rejected and accepted, and I’m formulating new ideas all the time. I also apparently wrote something good enough that Running Press is willing to publish it, with beautiful illustrations by Lily Seika Jones and tons of support and hard work from Adria.

It’s been a weird journey. I keep feeling like I have to quit, like I won’t make it, but something drags me back in. I keep finding ways to tell myself this doesn’t really count, that I should quit before everybody realizes I don’t actually know what I’m doing. But it does count, and I have improved, and I will continue to do so because as much as I tell myself I really ought to quit, I just can’t bring myself to do it.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

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Drabble 108 – Humicubate

Humicubate

It’s been a while, huh?

I’ve been phenomenally busy for the past two weeks. I went to two conventions, covering PAX West for Women Write About Comics and spending too much money at Rose City Comic Con. I had this drabble ready two weeks ago, but life got in the way and I’m trying to do better at taking care of myself.

At any given time, I’m trying to spin plates and juggle and live life as well, and sometimes I have to take a moment to set everything down and breathe. I don’t work better when I’m stressed, nor do I live better when I’m working all the time. And though I love the vast majority of the work I do, sometimes I need to put it aside.

In establishing arbitrary limits on myself–both in terms of when things need to be put online, for example, and in when I need to stop work for the day–I’ve found I’m getting much better at it. My work is better, more consistent. I sleep better. I’m in a more positive mood.

I know this, but it’s so hard to do. Give yourself a break regardless.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

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Drabble 101 – Cacchinator

Cacchinator

I’m never sure if I have a great sense of humor or a terrible one. I’m notoriously picky about comedy, but I laugh at nearly anything that even resembles a joke if it’s said to me in person. I laugh at the same jokes over and over again, no matter how many times I’ve heard them. I have read this post that I randomly found online like seven years ago at least ten times and found it hysterical with each re-read. I read the beginning again just now to make sure it was still funny, and, sure enough, I got to “Happy Birth Day Dad” before starting to chuckle to myself.

Nobody else seems to think this is as funny as I do, which is fine; I don’t have to prove that it’s funny to find it so, just as I don’t have to understand why my students find the word ‘attendees’ so funny that I had to change the words in a story problem just so they’d stop shrieking with laughter and actually solve the problem. What makes us laugh is unique to all of us, so while I might politely chuckle through The Big Lebowski, I have no shame in uproariously laughing at this silly drawing of a face and the memory of that time that my friends wouldn’t stop quoting The Mummy at me.

I might be embarrassed that it takes little to make me laugh, but I’m not. I’ve spent enough time unhappy; I’ll be loudly, gloriously, obnoxiously happy any time I please, even if it means I get the side-eye for laughing at a cake in public.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

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Drabble 100 – Fernweh

I honestly didn’t expect that I’d end up writing one hundred of these little stories. I started a blog because it’s what you’re supposed to do when you’re an aspiring writer, and short fiction is something I know. I’d been saving up a list of weird vocabulary words for no apparent reason, and after a whole bunch of angsting, I connected the two and this blog was born.

It’s never been about readership for me. Sure, it would be great if I had legions of loyal followers slavering for the next drabble, but that seems both unrealistic and unnecessary.

As a writer–as a person, really–I struggle a lot with legitimacy. It’s hard to convince myself that anything I do is valuable or meaningful. I told myself I couldn’t write a novel, so I did NaNoWriMo. I told myself I couldn’t write a blog, so I did this. Maybe constantly daring myself to do more isn’t the best way to prove that I can do things, but it’s worked.

I went back over all 100 posts last week because I’m putting together a little zine or chapbook of the ones I like best, and I found that, not only has my work markedly improved, but there are quite a few of these little stories I actually like. Each one encapsulates so many things–my mood at the moment of writing, a different idea of meaning, a tiny bit of fiction. I’ll never be satisfied with anything I make, but, in looking back, I’ve found that there’s a lot I do value there.

I don’t know how long I’ll keep this up for, but 100 drabbles is just a beginning.

Anyway, here’s one more.

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Drabble 90 – Sciaphobia

Sciaphobia

I’ve stared at this open blog post for a while and I’m coming up with nothing.

Writing advice is tricky. Don’t use adverbs. Sometimes use adverbs. Always outline. Write by the seat of your pants. Write when the inspiration strikes. Write every single day, a thousand words, or you’ll never make it as a writer.

I’ve been struggling with that last one for a while, making myself miserable because some days, after writing all day for work and cleaning my house and making dinner, the thought of writing gives me a headache. I felt guilty last week for skipping a drabble because I was at a concert. Should I have been writing from my phone? Should I have chosen not to go because writing is important?

Life is just as important to my writing process as actually doing the writing. I take writing very seriously–it’s my job and I want to expand my paid work to include fiction. I’ve polished another story for submission this year. I’m editing a poem. I’m writing two novels. Just…maybe not every day, because I also need to do things that aren’t work or I’ll run screaming into the woods and never return.

Breaks are important. A night off from writing is not a black mark signifying your failure. (Probably–to be fair, I’m not professionally published and maybe every editor who has ever rejected my work is lurking outside my house, taking note of when I skip a night to justify the rejection). Despite the lingering guilt I feel about skipping a week, those experiences I had were as important to writing as actually putting the words on paper or screen. Provided, of course, that I actually do put words on screen.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

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Drabble 83 – Coruscant

Coruscant
Gems by fdecomite

When I was younger, I used to hide myself away. Not literally; hide and seek was usually, among my group of friends, a reason to scare one another. Somewhere in childhood I learned that I should be embarrassed of things, and I started speaking more softly, hiding my intelligence and curiosity, and dressing more like a tomboy because being a girl, to my understanding, was to be a lot of things that I definitively was not.

While the old instincts to be embarrassed still linger, I no longer try to hide myself. I wear my gender and all its hyper-feminine trappings proudly; I’m no longer afraid of lipstick or dresses or high heels, even as I recognize their patriarchal roots. I wear them because I like them, and because I enjoy the feeling of seeing somebody’s face change when they assume one thing about me from the way I look and discover another.

I had these things shoved on me because that’s what I was supposed to do or be like or enjoy, and I hated them. But as I’ve grown up, I’ve found that I like cooking and gardening and wearing pastels. There’s no harm in any which way you choose to present yourself or spend your time, provided, of course, that it’s you doing the choosing.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

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Well, 2016 Happened.

At the risk of being navel-gazey, the end of the year has made me think a lot about my growth and, conversely, the lack thereof.

I didn’t accomplish every goal I set out for this year. I’m not surprised by that; in the past couple months, I’ve left one of my stable sources of income behind for the wild unknown. I worked a lot for too little money, spending precious time that I could have used to pursue my real goals.

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Drabble 68 – Aureate

aureate

Imposter syndrome is a real thing. Almost everybody I know experiences it to some agree, fully expecting someone to swoop down on us and cart us away for impersonating a person who knows what they’re doing. We’re our own harshest critics; ask me any time and I’ll tell you that my friends are the most hardworking, incredible, intelligent people on earth and that they deserve every good thing that might come their way. Ask me that question and I’ll pause, not just because I feel a need to be humble, but because I’m genuinely not sure.

I’ve written about this before, but I still grapple with thinking that anything I say or do has any value. Logically, I know it does. I wouldn’t have the opportunities I’ve had if my work didn’t have any kind of meaning. I wouldn’t get such nice emails from podcast listeners if the things Merri and I say didn’t matter.

But still, I wonder. I pick what I do apart and assume nobody’s listening, nobody’s reading, nobody’s caring. It’s bullshit, frankly. I know it is. I just have to keep up that daily mantra loud enough that I don’t hear the thoughts that tell me otherwise.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

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Drabble 64 – Rubatosis

Rubatosis

I’m lucky in a lot of ways, but one of the ones I think of most often is that, despite my lack of self-confidence and constant second-guessing of myself, my body has never really been part of that. I was a teenager once; I worried about how I looked, pursing my lips in mirrors and wondering if anybody would ever want to kiss them, but somewhere along the line I decided I was ugly and that was that, there was nothing to be done, and I would just have to carry on in spite of that.

A lot of my self-perception is wrapped up in feeling ownership over my own body. I don’t worry so much about whether I’m attractive to others anymore; I’m more concerned with whether I’m attractive to myself. I care more about how short hair feels, about how lipstick feels, about how a dress or heels or jeans or whatever else I care to cover my body in feels. Because I primarily work from home, I often see myself without makeup, all the little flaws in my skin, the red spot at the end of my nose, the prickly heat currently turning my fingers into an embarrassing bumpy mess.

That’s not to say I’m not ever self-conscious. I’m constantly self-conscious. But I’m making peace with my flaws little by little, embracing that red spot, my hobbit feet, my cowlicks.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

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Drabble 53 – Cosmogyral

Cosmogyral
Stars by Nigel Howe

I took a day off!

That might not seem like that big of a deal, but trust me–it is. I am terrible at taking time for myself, but last week I decided I didn’t have enough time to post a drabble, so I didn’t.

Most of the time, I hold myself to self-imposed deadlines because it’s very easy to let myself off the hook because of self-doubt. “Oh, nobody’s reading it anyway,” I say, despite knowing full well it isn’t true. At least one person is reading my drabbles, because she hounded me last week to remind me to put it up. (Thanks, Stephani.)

I give myself deadlines because somebody has to hold me accountable. But I’m the worst editor I’ve ever had, not in the sense of me being a poor editor (though I do usually catch at least one typo per post, hopefully before anybody else sees it), but in the sense of me having no sympathy. You’re sick? Too bad. You lack direction? Too bad. You literally do not have a spare minute between work and sleep? Too bad.

Writing often requires me to step outside of my own head. Sometimes that doesn’t mean just letting the words flow and not worrying about my insistent inner critic, but also talking to myself like I would talk to a friend in my position.

It’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to take a day off. Let yourself breathe for a moment, then step back in. The words will be there when you get back. And they were.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

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