I’m afraid I didn’t go to many CornBelters games this year. Aside from the Home Run Derby and the All-Star game, I only went to two. One was a suspended due to rain in the 3rd inning. The other was a blowout loss, but at least I got all nine innings in.
There were two reasons I didn’t go much this season. One was, of course, money. Not that the tickets cost much; those prices are quite nice. But the cost of gas and the cost of concessions add up and all told, it was money I couldn’t afford to spend even if I wanted to.
And the second reason is I didn’t really want to. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Corn Crib and I love the Belters, but this team was in such flux it was hard to get into a groove. It seemed like every other week a player was traded. I realize that the manager was trying to put together a winning team (that didn’t work out since they went 29-67), but as a fan, it was rough.
Part of the fun of last season was rooting for the players individually as well as the team. We knew the names and the numbers. The 2011 team was blown up pretty early and I was up to the challenge of learning the new guys and finding new favorites. But then the new guys didn’t hang around very long either. There was no time to get to know many of them because if you blinked, they were gone. Once Alvaro Ramirez got traded after the All-Star game, I gave up. There was no point. I didn’t know the team and wasn’t going to be given time to get to know the team.
I like going to ballgames, but for me, I like it when I can relate to the team I’m rooting beyond the numbers on the jersey. It was a lot of fun cheering for Mike Mobbs and Ramirez and Bobby Pritchett last year. I knew their names, knew their numbers, knew their walk-up music. It was like rooting for friends.
This season I was rooting for a bunch of strangers that I wasn’t allowed to get to know. It wasn’t as much fun. As such, I wasn’t as het up and driven to go to games. I feel bad about that.
I hope next year the players are able to hang around longer so the fans have someone to root for. Winning draws fans, but so does a little consistency.
In the course of the past week I saw two good articles about fat people and health.
The first pertains to a doctor denying to take a woman on as a patient because she’s fat.
The second is about the “thin paradox”: how thin people get diseases that only fat people are supposed to get.
Now, in regards to the first article, I’ve never been told by a doctor that they can’t treat me because I’m fat. But I know that it happens and I’m not surprised by it. The disdain for fat people is palpable beyond the mall and fast food joints. I’m taking up too much space with my rolls and it disgusts people no matter where I go. I’m not surprised that it disgusts doctors, too. After all, they are people. Worse, they’re people with years of medical training that has educated them to believe that fat, any and all fat, is bad.
Which leads me to the second article. If you’re fat and you do find a doctor willing to see you, then the automatic cure for whatever it is that ails you is to lose weight. High cholesterol? Lose weight. High blood pressure? Lose weight. Painful menstrual cramps? Lose weight. Sinus trouble? Lose weight.
If you’re thin and you have these problems…I guess you get actual treatment? Because if you’re thin then you must be really sick. If you’re fat…well…you’re just fat and that’s the cause of all your trouble.
So, let’s review…
If you’re fat, you don’t necessarily deserve a doctor’s care because if you’re fat then you clearly don’t care about your health and would just be wasting the doctor’s time. But if you want a doctor to see you then you should lose weight first, then you’ll be worth the appointment. If you can find a doctor with reinforced tables and whale scales and Paul Bunyon blood pressure cuffs and whatever else it is that doctors think they need to treat fat people, then whatever your complaint is can be cured if you lose weight.
Gee, fat people. I guess we can save a whole lot of money and cut out the middle man if we just lose weight.
Reasonable, right? Sure.
I know of someone who is a size zero, doesn’t exercise, and makes mention of eating once or twice a day and that consumption might be a candy bar or a cupcake or a diet Coke and some pretzels. Meanwhile, I’m a size 20/22, exercise five days a week (most weeks), and make a conscious effort to make my meals somewhat healthy in both content and portion size and number. However, based on the two articles I linked to a doctor would be more likely to see her and more likely to treat her better because she’s thin.
Doctor’s perpetuating the myth that thin=healthy is a huge disservice to the masses (pun intended). Fat people are being led to believe that weight loss will cure everything and thin people are being led to believe that they can’t possibly be unhealthy. It’s criminal bullshit, really.
With all of that said, I’ve never had any of this happen to me. I’ve never had a doctor refuse me because I was fat. The only doctor I’ve had that discussed weight loss with me was the plastic surgeon that did my breast reduction surgery. He asked if I tried to lose weight to reduce my breast size. I wasn’t insulted by it. He wanted to make sure I’d explored other options before surgery. (FYI: I did try to lose weight to reduce my breast size. I lost twenty pounds. None of it came off of my chest. When I gained it back, it went to the boobs.)
Granted, I don’t have a lot of doctor experiences in my adult life. Not because my fat keeps me from going, though. For me it’s usually lack of insurance/short on money/I don’t go unless something is hanging off by a thread because I’m pretty sure it’ll be fine in a day or two even if it is the plague that keeps me from going to the doctor.
But that’s another story.
The point is I’ve never personally been doomed to ill-health by a doctor that refused to treat me because I’m fat or by a doctor that thinks weight-loss will cure whatever ails me, and I don’t think anyone else should be either.
Fat doesn’t make people unhealthy. Doctors that don’t take fat people seriously do.
A few months ago (I think June, but I’m too lazy to go back and look for sure), I blogged about starting a new novel and writing it in a completely different way than I was used to. I was going to outline a few chapters, write those chapters, revise those chapters, and then move, sort of leapfrogging my way through the book.
I’ve admired the writes that can do that sort of thing. It looked like a much more efficient way to write a book. They don’t have to wait until their finished with the first draft to go back and fix glaring story problems or character issues. They revise as they go along to catch those things. Then when they do finish the first draft, they’ve got a whole lot less fixing to do. In other words, their first drafts put them a lot closer to a final draft.
That’s great for them. I still admire and envy them. But that’s not for me.
I used this technique with the Ivy novel (it still doesn’t have a title). While I did like not getting too far ahead in the outline so I could make adjustments and I liked the ability to go back and fix big story problems or combine chapters before I got too far ahead of myself, overall, I found the whole process rather tedious. By the time I started outlining the next few chapters I was relieved because I was sick of the chapters I’d been working on. That sickness has followed me all the way through the draft.
As of this post, I’ve still got two chapters to write and four chapters to revise (though, I don’t think I’ll be doing much of anything major to those chapters) and I’ll be done with the draft. Yes, I’ll be a lot closer to a final draft when I’m finished and that’s great, but I don’t think I want to write a novel this way again. At least not for a long time.
I do think I’ve picked up a couple of useful tricks from doing writing this way, though.
Not getting too far ahead in my outline is a great help. I think I need to start doing two outlines. The BIG outline of the general story arcs I want to tell. And the DETAIL outline of what goes in each chapter. The BIG outline will keep me from forgetting things. The DETAIL outline is what I need to stay on task (this is invaluable to me during NaNo when I must hit my word count for the day; I know exactly what I’m going to right about so I don’t have to waste time wondering). If I only outline a few chapters at a time, then I can make the adjustments I need to it without derailing the whole thing.
The second thing is that it’s okay to go back and change big, glaring story problems while writing the first draft. Okay, yes, this isn’t exactly time efficient during NaNo, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. And it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be done just because I am writing a first draft and I prefer to write it all the way through without revising. Sometimes it’s a benefit to break that self-imposed rule. In the end, it helps me out more than it hurts me.
So, while I think I will always be one of those writers that has to get it all down on paper in one go, I do think this experience has made me a little smarter about how I can go about that more efficiently.
It’s back-to-school time again and that seems to provoke adults, even ones without children, to remember their school days.
I remember high school. Somewhat. Sort of. It’s been a while. I can remember a few things about freshman year, a few more about sophomore year. Junior year has it’s blurry moments. Senior year has a few more clear memories. For me it wasn’t the hell hole some make it out to be. It also wasn’t the glorious, best-time-of-my-life experience either. I walked the line, I suppose. I had some good times, I had some crap times. I wasn’t bullied. I wasn’t popular. I had my friends and my insecurities just like everyone else.
It wasn’t my best period in life, but if it was, that’d be a real downer. Who the hell wants their life to peak at 16?
I didn’t go to my ten year class reunion. Not because I couldn’t, but because I didn’t want to. I still live in the same town I went to school all my life in. Many of the people in my class still live in town. Working at Wal-Mart I saw a lot of them. To me it didn’t feel like ten years was long enough to get together and pretend life was a strawberry picking festival back then. Especially, since some of the people I’d be seeing at the reunion acted like they didn’t know me when they saw me around town (and maybe they didn’t recognize me, maybe I’m that easily forgotten; but I know that’s not the case for all of them).
And there’s some people that even after all this time, I just do not like and I’m not going to like. Period. Not even for an evening of good times.
Sorry. No amount of booze makes me want to play nicey-nice with you.
Now, this isn’t to say that everyone I went to school with was a jerk. Some of them were. Some of them still are. Time doesn’t change everyone and the ones that time does change don’t necessarily change for the better. Through the magic of Facebook, I’ve found that several people that I got along with and hung out with in high school have become people I don’t care for very much. (It should be noted that this doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad people. It also means that I’m not excluded in that whole change thing. Personalities that once worked together mature, grow, change and end up no longer meshing. That kind of thing happens. What I’m saying is that this sort of judgment is subjectivity at its finest.)
However, there were some people I went to school with that hold a special place in my timeline. They were truly lovely people that made an impression during a turbulent time in my existence and I’m happy to have known them. I’m friends with some of them on Facebook and I’ll be honest when I say that they still give me warm fuzzies when they pop up on my timeline.
Oddly enough, those are the people I haven’t seen in person very much since graduation.
Apparently, there are plans to attempt a 15 year reunion next year. I’m not sure if I’d go if it happens.
On one hand, I don’t feel like 15 years has been long enough either, though I got out of retail and don’t see a lot of my old classmates around town as much as I used to. Now I see them on Facebook and that’s kind of good enough for me.
On the other hand, there’s this theory that when you get people together in a class reunion situation, the old cliques and social hierarchies come back, like an instinct, and I’m half curious to see in person if that would happen. I suspect that it would, despite the time passed and the changes everyone has gone through.
There’s something that hasn’t changed since high school.
I’m still the weird girl that thinks about things from a totally different angle.
I go through periods in which I think everything is flat. Like Sprite that’s lost its fizz, my ideas, my stories, my everything has no life.
If I get an idea during this period (and that’s a pretty big if), it’s not very good. It’s just a little sliver of something that could be good, but I feel no buzz for it, no drive to put it down on paper. It’s something, but it’s more like nothing.
Any words I put down on paper are lackluster. The stories have no sparkle. It all just lays there on the page, flat as a day old flounder on newspaper. The entire act of writing is just going through the motions. Sure the story gets written, but it’s nothing more than a yawn on paper.
If I’m doing story revisions/rewrites, I can nail all of the grammar and spelling problems, but I can’t fix the story. I’m not “inspired” enough to see what changes I need to make to best serve the story.
It’s a funny feeling, going through a flat phase like that. It’s like I’ve got nothing, not even fumes in the tank. I look around at every project I’ve got going and I feel absolutely overwhelmed by the boredom of it all. Nothing is good, nothing is interesting, nothing is exciting.
The thing about this feeling is that it’s all inside and has nothing to do with the work. The work doesn’t change, but my perception of it does. And there’s no real reason for my perception to change, it just does.
I suppose it’s like sailors hitting the doldrums. One day, they’re just sailing along. The next day, they’re going nowhere, everything is so calm and so still and so STATIONARY.
I realize I’m whipping out a lot of metaphors and similes to explain this feeling, but that’s only because I’m having trouble capturing it in words. It’s a hard feeling to explain, but you know if you’ve had it. It’s an unmistakable feeling of flatness.
I just went through another stretch of flatness. For a couple of weeks I looked at my white board, at my writing projects to do list, and thought, “meh”. When I looked at the board then, I saw nothing worth mentioning, just the same old routine.
Then one day I woke up and proceeded to go through the motions of writing and found that the flatness wasn’t there anymore. The bubbles came back and with them came ideas worth writing down and going through with. The words I put on the paper had a little more spice. The problems that plagued my stories suddenly had solutions that had been there the whole time, I’m sure.
When the flatness leaves, when it fills out to become something round and whole again, it’s like a rush of air into a balloon. Suddenly I’m very full of everything I’d been lacking for the days or weeks before. And it makes me wonder how I ever survived being flat, how I could ever bear that happening.
I guess it’s because I don’t know it’s happening. Like a balloon, it slowly leaks out. Like a soda left to sit, the bubbles slowly leave until there’s nothing left but flatness.
This isn’t nearly as illegal as the blog title makes it sound, but I do feel like I’ve been breaking some rules.
You see Cubs fans don’t think their team should have any fun during a losing season. Seriously. No fun for you. They want their team to carry the weight of the misery of losing without so much as a smirk. Never mind the fact that they all predicted this team to lose 100 games, but by God, they’re not supposed to ENJOY any of it. You’re not supposed to have a good time if you’re losing.
So if you apply this logic to my life then I’ve been having illicit fun since about 1994 because that’s when my losing seasons really started in earnest.
That’s when I stopped having boyfriends. That’s when I started gaining weight. That’s when my social awkwardness really became exposed. That’s when my anxiety skyrocketed.
And it pretty much went downhill from there.
My parents separated and divorced and left me to my own devices. I chose not to go to college in part because I didn’t think I was good enough to get a scholarship and I knew I couldn’t afford to pay for it myself. I also didn’t go to college because I’d been busting my ass all through high school with no reward and I was tired. I wanted to take a semester off. I also put off going to college because I didn’t know what I wanted to go to college FOR.
From there I’ve worked several “crap” jobs, engaged in a relationship that was doomed to fail and put me off any sort of serious relationships for a very long time, dealt with depression, never moved out of my dad’s house, avoided many adult responsibilities, dug myself a hole of debt to chase a dream, and generally failed at every endeavor I’ve ever attempted. I’ve never been out of the country, never been farther west than Kansas City, never taken a cruise.
I am the poster child for losing seasons.
And yet, I’ve had more than one good time.
While I was boyfriend-less and rudder-less going into my senior year of high school, I had a blast sleeping in the hallway in the mornings before school, playing Spit in study hall, going to my first Monkees concert, and rocking a 60’s vibe all year.
While working at Wal-Mart instead of going back to college after a semester, I colored my hair a rainbow of colors, went to a lot of wrestling shows, raided Chicago with my Clique, and ran Wal-Mart with the rest of the lowlies.
Then I blew a lot of my money supporting an indy wrestling fed when I maybe shouldn’t have. But I had a great time doing those shows and spending most of my weekends in the Chicago suburbs watching guys wrestle before heading downtown to roam and not getting home until 5AM, meaning I was up for 24 hours.
During my last go round at Wal-Mart (which to most people is the equivalent of losing every day), I spent many days off and vacations going to Wizard World and DragonCon.
Even broke and unemployed, I managed to get to a Cubs game.
My point is that according to Cubs fans, I shouldn’t have been any of these good times. I didn’t deserve them. Because I was losing.
At first, I felt a little guilty about that. Here I’d had all of this fun that I didn’t deserve. I was supposed to be miserable, not alleviating the pressure of my mounting losses. I wasn’t happy with losing. Frankly, I’d rather be doing a lot more winning. It’s easier to have fun while you’re winning than while you’re using. I guess that’s because you’re not supposed to have fun while you’re losing.
And then I thought, “Fuck that shit. I’ll have fun whenever I can.”
Having fun in spite of losing doesn’t mean I don’t want to win. It doesn’t mean I’m happy with losing.
It means you’re not the boss of me.
And it means the fun I’m going to have when my losing seasons turn to winning ones is going to be a cause for jealousy.
This is a post of frustration. I want that known right up front. Because this might come off as whiny/bitchy/cranky/crabby/selfish and a whole lot of other not so nice words (that I’ve grown accustomed to being called).
But there’s a lot of frustration in writing. There’s frustration in trying to get the right tone, the right word choice, the right pacing, the right dialogue, the right word count.
And then there’s the frustration of getting your work published. Finding a publication that fits your story, following all of the guidelines (which an border on ridiculous, but that’s another post for another day), submitting, waiting, and then hoping that whoever is on the other end reading your work will like it and if they do like it, they can use it. And, of course, there’s the frustration of rejection that goes along with that. After so many times, you start wondering about the story in question.
Speaking of wondering, there’s also the frustration of being read. As in nobody seems to want to read your work. Friends, family, acquaintances, Twitter followers, Facebook friends, nobody is interested. No offense! But they just don’t like that kind of story.
It’s the last two frustrations that are currently topping my frustration cup.
I take submission guidelines seriously. I don’t want to waste their time or mine. As such, I scrutinize what publishers want very carefully. And it seems like what they want, I ain’t got. Finding a good fit for my stories seems to be getting harder and harder every time I look. I realize that part of the problem is my own limitations because there’s only one place that I submit to that doesn’t pay. Every other publication I look at has to give me some sort of coin for my work. And I limit myself even further because I try to approximate those token payments as closely I can to the work I’m submitting, i.e., how much would I lose on this story if this place published it.
I realize how snobby and entitled that sounds, but do you get paid for YOUR work? Yeah, I bet you do. Now considering I can put weeks/months into a 2,500 word story only to be offered five bucks for it (a penny a word is my baseline, so that story would net me 25 bucks), yeah, I’m going to shoot for a better payday.
This is a frustration I’ve mentioned before, but I’m mentioning it again because I feel it bears repeating. Call it a need for justification. It’s a head-banging-against-a-wall feeling that non-writers have trouble relating to.
The second frustration is really hitting me hard lately because I’m in need of some support and I don’t know where to go to get it. I write horror fiction for the most part. It’s not a genre that a lot of people I know care for. Of the ones that would read it, there seems to be a real lack of time on their part. Read that as they have lives and don’t have time to beta for me. And that’s fine. I understand it.
But it still frustrates the hell out of me.
It would be nice to have someone, anyone, take an actual interest in my work. Without me forcing them. Without me begging them to make some time to read a story. Without me feeling like I’m nagging people. Without me feeling like I’m guilting people into it.
But I haven’t reached that point in my career yet. I’m not in demand, even with people that actually know me. It’s understandable, but no less of a bummer.
Today is the 10th anniversary of my breast reduction surgery and I’m going to celebrate by telling the one boobs story that my friends love best.
As detailed in a previous post (because I often talk about my breasts), my breast reduction surgery involved a free nipple graft. In short, this means my nipples were removed and at one point during that day, laying on the table next to me. They were then reattached.
Now, a couple of years prior to this surgery, I had my left nipple pierced. When your breasts were as big as mine were, you tend to get less shy about certain things. Flopping my tit out to have someone ram a needle and then some jewelry through my nipple seemed like a good idea. If I went back, I’d do it again. To me, there was nothing embarrassing about it, though I’m sure that piercing guy probably still tells the story of my massive boob. He was pretty impressed.
Anyway, as is a risk with piercings and despite my best care (and maybe because I have terrible luck with any piercing not in my ears), my nipple ring grew out. Basically, my body rejected it and forced it out. It got to the point where there was only a thin layer of skin keeping the jewelry in. So I took it out and the piercing healed, leaving a scar (as most things do on me). Nothing major, just two little indentions on either side of my nipple.
Which brings us back to my breast reduction and my nipples being taken off.
After the complication of having the skin on my left nipple die, slough off, and heal, I was able to really see the handiwork of my plastic surgeon.
And I realized, by the position of the old nipple piercing scar, that my nipple was on cockeyed. It’s in the right position, but the scar points more to 4 and 10, rather than 3 and 9, if you take my meaning.
It’s probably something that happens a lot with free nipple graft surgeries, but most people probably don’t have the means to recognize it.
So, what did I do when I discovered it? I burst out laughing and then told all of my friends that I’d been keeping up-to-date on my boobs.
The consensus? They thought it was the funniest thing ever. To the point, that if a related conversational topic comes up (you’d be surprised how many there are), they will call upon me to tell the tale. Because it’s funny and bizarre and unlike anything anyone else has ever experienced.
I don’t have many one-of-a-kind experiences in my life, but that one is definitely everyone’s favorite.
A couple of decades ago when I spent large chunks of my summer at my grandma’s house because I had my own room, could watch baseball from the hot tub on her deck, and got channels that I didn’t have at home, I was introduce to the wonder and marvel that is Batman.
na na na na na na na
Batman was obviously based off of the comic book of the same name and featured Bruce Wayne (Adam West) and his young ward Dick Grayson (Burt Ward) fighting crime as the Dynamic Duo Batman and Robin. Loyal butler Alfred (Alan Napier) dusted the Batcave and helped keep their secret from the world, including Dick’s Aunt Harriet (Madge Blake). They’re summoned via Batphone and Batsignal by Commissioner Gordon (Neil Hamilton) and Chief O’Hara (Stafford Repp) at the first sign of a super criminal as the Gotham City police force apparently only employed the cops that weren’t capable of fighting crime much worse than traffic violations.
The super criminals in question included of The Joker, The Riddler, Catwoman, The Penguin, Mr. Freeze, Egghead, The Puzzler, Clock King, King Tut, Bookworm, Olga Queen of the Cossaks, Black Widow, Zelda the Great, Shame, Ma Parker, Mad Hatter, Marsha Queen of Diamonds, The Archer, and Louie the Lilac. Some of these were villains in the Batman comics, others were villains from other comics, and still others were made up or re-imagined for the show.
The super villains typically came to Gotham with an unbelievable crime planned and once their presence was detected, Batman and Robin would try to thwart them. Inevitably, Batman and/or Robin would get caught in a trap which would lead to them nearly dispatched by some elaborate super hero killing machine the villain came up with. However, they’d always manage to escape at the last possible second and end up catching the bad guy in the end. This drama played out over two episodes shown on consecutive nights for the first two seasons, but was cut down to one during the third and final season.
The costumes, the bright colors, the clever camera angles (the villain scenes were all filmed at a slant because they’re crooked, you now), the BAM! ZAP! BIFF! during the fight scenes, the breathless narrator (Same Bat-Time! Same Bat-Channel!), and sometimes (okay, lots of times) corny dialogue made it quite comic book-like and of course, ramped up the camp factor. And if there’s one thing pop culture loves, it’s camp.
Batman’s utility belt, his penchant for labeling everything at bat-whatevers, and Robin’s holy exclamations had staying power when it comes to clever pop culture witticisms.
Holy WTF, Batman!
As silly as this show is, it was the show to be on back in the day. The guest stars weren’t doing this gig because they didn’t have anything else going for them; they did it because they were clamoring to be on the show. Hard to believe, I know, but think of it as the precursor to the people that show up in SyFy movies that you don’t think should be there (William Katt? Why are you here and why are you wearing your mother’s glasses?).
Guest stars included Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith, Frank Gorshin, Julie Newman, John Astin, Eartha Kitt, Art Carney, Ethel Merman, Joan Collins, Shelley Winters, Milton Berle, Victor Buono, Cliff Robertson, Carolyn Jones, Vincent Price, Eli Wallach, Tallulah Bankhead, Jill St. John, Anne Baxter, Doodles Weaver, Rudy Vallee, Glynis Johns, Ethel Merman, Lesley Gore, Liberace, and Roddy McDowell.
Demand to be on the show was so great, that “window cameos” were created. As the Dynamic Duo climbed up the side of a building (walked along the floor holding onto a rope with strings holding their capes out while the camera filmed sideways), a celebrity would pop out of a window. Those cameos included Sammy Davis Jr, Jerry Lewis, Don Ho, Colonel Klink (Werner Klemperer), Lurch (Ted Cassidy), Edward G. Robinson, Dick Clark and Art Linkletter.
Batman and Robin were joined in Gotham City by the Green Hornet and Kato (Van Williams and Bruce Lee) for an episode (they also appeared once in a window) which led me to nearly explode with glee. In the third season, Barbara Gordon, commissioners daughter and Batgirl (Yvonne Craig), was added to the regulars. Her lace trimmed Batgirl Cycle is truly a sight to behold.
While I love most of the villains, if I’m hard pressed to choose a favorite, I have to go with King Tut. Joker, Riddler (Frank Gorshin version), Penguin, and Catwoman are all fabulous, but Victor Buono brings that added oomph to the camp that I just adore.
This show is so much fun and it never seems to get old, no matter how many times I watch it.
I admit that when I say I’m busy on Saturday nights, what I mean is I’m watching Batman.
I’ve read in more than one place that writers should reward themselves for the little accomplishments they have along the way of bigger successes. They should do that because writing is a long slog from first draft to publication and while you’re doing it, it feels like you’re doing it for nothing. You put in all of this work and in the end, you might not see a dime for it. Rewarding yourself during the process helps alleviate that hopeless feeling that tends to creep up when you’re not looking.
Personally, I think it’s a great idea. Eating some ice cream at the end of a first draft, drinking some wine after slogging through revisions, playing a video game after meeting the day’s word count, or going out with some friends after submitting that short story is great. It’s a nice motivator to get through the hard parts and it’s a nice release once you do. Whatever reward you come up with, good on ya. Whatever flips your skirt and rocks your boat.
I’ll just be over here wishing I could do the same thing.
I don’t reward myself. At all. Ever. Even on the rare occasion that a short story gets accepted somewhere, the most I do is pause for a fist pump and then get back to work.
Why?
I guess it’s because of the way I was raised. Yes, of all the things to blame on my parents, I blame not eating pizza after finishing a first draft of a novel. But it’s true. My parents didn’t believe in rewarding us kids for things we were supposed to do. I didn’t get an allowance for cleaning my room. I was supposed to do that. I didn’t get a trip to Dairy Queen for making good grades. I was supposed to do that. I remember when I was a kid finding out that my friends got paid a dollar amount for A’s and B’s. I asked my parents why I didn’t get paid like that.
I was supposed to do that.
So here I am, 32 years old, been writing most of my life, and while I approve of the idea of getting a treat for finishing a first draft or revisions or submitting or accomplishing anything, big or small, related to a writing career, I can’t bring myself to participate because…I’m supposed to do that.
I’m supposed to finish that first draft and finish those revisions and submit that story and do that research and this, that, and the other. It’s part of my job. I don’t get rewarded for supposed to’s.
I would imagine that my attitude won’t change much when (not if!) I get my first novel published.
Because as a writer, that’s what I’m supposed to do. And as I writer, I’m supposed to write another.
So, I’d better get on it.
There’s no time for me to celebrate supposed to’s.
I’m afraid I didn’t go to many CornBelters games this year. Aside from the Home Run Derby and the All-Star game, I only went to two. One was a suspended due to rain in the 3rd inning. The other was a blowout loss, but at least I got all nine innings in.
Kiki Writes About... 