Writing is a journey, not a destination.

Search This Blog

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Pressure

Buckle up, dear readers. A rant is coming.

Not about marriage this time. Chuckle.

No, it's about pressure. Real and imagined. Mostly imagined.

Two days ago, I was happy. Driving to work, humming, I thought, "I'm happy." Chirping "Have a great day" to customers, I was happy. Planning and writing my first NAF post, I was happy.

Today, I am not happy.

Nothing has changed. Well, the weather has turned gloomy, but doggoneit! that shouldn't matter. My mood should not be tied to whether I can see the sun! It's still there. It hasn't gone anywhere.
But, mostly, nothing has changed. Except my expectations of myself.

I don't know what to write at NAF. I have these "great" ideas, and when I go there to draft them, they disappear. The format is different in the Borg spaceship, and the white space looks funny, and I'm supposed to provide images other than my FV pics, and it's all just weird and different and new and scary.

I want to amaze and tickle and provoke, and I'm paralyzed with indecision about how to do that.
What if I break a rule? What if I offend a reader instead of provoking? What if I embarrass the team?

"If she doesn't run after that, she never will," Horus said.

"Caissa doesna run. She freezes. Like a rabbit," Merritt said.

I will turtle my way through, but only because I chose the turtle as my totem for this journey. I'd rather freeze. Or, better yet, run away like Sir Robin.

Which leads to another problem.

I promised the Gungho Iguana I wouldn't mirror post (or basically I promised). That means posting the same stuff here and there.

TT: Wordcrafter is now Gungho Iguana. He's earned that by continually jumping ahead of the slower and occasionally reluctant Turtle in his excitement. And Harvey the Rabbit just didn't have the right connotation.

Every time I start to post here, I wonder if I should post there. But I post here 5 days a week. More, if you count Virtual Buttercups' posts. Seems a bit inappropriate to post there 5 days a week. No one else does that. They all have real lives. They're probably all writing that Nanoo thing and setting the stage for publication one year from now.

Deep breath. I will not resent The Collective. They aren't causing this insecurity. Heavens, they have no idea I'm feeling this way. I didn't know I was feeling this way until I started feeling it.

Having written all this, I'm sure I will feel better. I will assimilate. I will learn to just write something while I'm there and something while I'm here, and if it amazes or tickles or provokes, it will most likely be completely inadvertent.

Basically, I need to calm down and lighten up.

And figure out what "downloading" the frelling images from IStock means. Where on earth do they go? Mars?

Oi!

Thanks for listening. I do feel a little better.

4 comments:

  1. It is just another day my darling daughter. Calm down and gear up. I mean T day is here, we have a bunch of wonderful people coming for dinner and I still have to go to store, clip Toby, get him a new sweater because he is sooooooooooo fat and start baking and cooking so tomorrow I can look relaxed and like this was no work at all. It is all in the perception as the calm duck in the water and the feet paddling like mad. Take a deep turtle breath and just "do it" as the ad says. Love you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. All will be well, Princess Turtle. If you will notice, we all have had months to adjust. You get adjustment time. You are to post once every 5 to 7 days as a rule of thumb. As far as images, Simply copy them and save to your computer. Then you can add them as you do your posts.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Advice taken. Deep breath. Calming down...now!

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.