Merry Christmas and I still haven't stopped being a shitty person
Recent activities have seen a certain backsliding in maturity: watched the entire first disk of my Christmas present from Lindsay, which was the Horrible Histories box set (aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh), have accidentally fallen into rereading the few Asterix books I have and also making Jess read them (I am an expert at looking past the GINORMOUS RACISM they unfortunately teem with and enjoying about 75% more jokes than I managed to get as a kid, it's pretty good fun). Jess has been painting things with a little cheap watercolour kit and, presented with some exciting coloured pens, I have been trying to doodle things from the nice Village Architecture of Britain book I picked up at the South Bank book market. (also watched: the Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe; the Neverending Story; Matthew Bourne's Sleeping Beauty [ballet]; Tangled; Stephen Fry and Bear Grylls up a mountain having some bonding about the fact that they both got sent away to school when they were 7/8 and both got "asked to leave" school; and a shittonne of cooking programs).
Trapped Jess in a horrible conversation about what to do with life and concluded that in order to progress with writing (which I need to do because I feel like I'm in a fucking cul-de-sac at the moment and I want change) I need to go get some more professional input. As previously discussed I can't fucking pay a pro editor to look at my stuff because that makes me eighty shades of asshole and I am already thirty five shades of asshole for taking a degree in this stuff when Proper Writers take degrees in other subjects. I would like to try one of those residential writers' courses but: Money; fear that they will be for people who are closer to the beginning of this than I am; even though Melanie has taken one and enjoyed it I am fundamentally certain that if I take one it makes me a wanker. And I don't really know how to get the input, professional input, that I need, without becoming a wanker. How do other people manage to become decent writers without taking a wanker step? Did I miss a class? Am I just fundamentally both wanker and unable to proper writer? [NB: my view may also be coloured by my father going off for a painters' retreat last summer or whenever it was, and I have a strong desire not to turn into him OR my mother, which may involve never doing anything and basically putting myself in a coma]. Worse: all the people I know who write for a living in some capacity, with the exception of Melanie, have not gone the classes and lessons route; they have Real Friends In The Business who have given them feedback or guidance or advice and somehow they've made it from there, and I rather imagine most of them would be fairly contemptuous of Going The Wanker Route. Spending money on becoming better at a thing is a no-no, so I guess my absolutely poisonous personality and inability to make Real Friends In The Business is my undoing. Wanker or nothing. I suppose I don't have to tell people that I went.
Worse still, there are other courses I want to do which won't lead to jobs or more money and are basically self-indulgent activities of the sort that make me a horrible-middle-class lady of leisure or some shit (ref. my mother in latter years, constantly going to Workshops): I want to do some intro to Electronics Engineering stuff because I distrust my self-directed abilities in that area and would rather have someone else around to correct me; I would like to learn book-binding; I would like to learn proper type-setting/printing as well as the basics of digital typesetting that I learned in previous jobs.
And the we run into the double-standard because I am pretty sure Miranda isn't a wanker for taking and enjoying a short course on illustration at C. St Martins, and part of me wants to genuinely suggest that Ruthi takes a short art course somewhere so she can pick up drawing again and has a reason to go out regularly and things, and I definitely don't think Ruthi is a wanker. So I'm stumped as to why doing anything that costs money instead of makes money makes me a wanker. I'm stumped as to why I'm mildly convinced that anything I do makes me a wanker. But I can't shake off the idea that anything I engage in which isn't up for sale or entirely passive (reading, watching tv) is somehow wankerdom.
Trapped Jess in a horrible conversation about what to do with life and concluded that in order to progress with writing (which I need to do because I feel like I'm in a fucking cul-de-sac at the moment and I want change) I need to go get some more professional input. As previously discussed I can't fucking pay a pro editor to look at my stuff because that makes me eighty shades of asshole and I am already thirty five shades of asshole for taking a degree in this stuff when Proper Writers take degrees in other subjects. I would like to try one of those residential writers' courses but: Money; fear that they will be for people who are closer to the beginning of this than I am; even though Melanie has taken one and enjoyed it I am fundamentally certain that if I take one it makes me a wanker. And I don't really know how to get the input, professional input, that I need, without becoming a wanker. How do other people manage to become decent writers without taking a wanker step? Did I miss a class? Am I just fundamentally both wanker and unable to proper writer? [NB: my view may also be coloured by my father going off for a painters' retreat last summer or whenever it was, and I have a strong desire not to turn into him OR my mother, which may involve never doing anything and basically putting myself in a coma]. Worse: all the people I know who write for a living in some capacity, with the exception of Melanie, have not gone the classes and lessons route; they have Real Friends In The Business who have given them feedback or guidance or advice and somehow they've made it from there, and I rather imagine most of them would be fairly contemptuous of Going The Wanker Route. Spending money on becoming better at a thing is a no-no, so I guess my absolutely poisonous personality and inability to make Real Friends In The Business is my undoing. Wanker or nothing. I suppose I don't have to tell people that I went.
Worse still, there are other courses I want to do which won't lead to jobs or more money and are basically self-indulgent activities of the sort that make me a horrible-middle-class lady of leisure or some shit (ref. my mother in latter years, constantly going to Workshops): I want to do some intro to Electronics Engineering stuff because I distrust my self-directed abilities in that area and would rather have someone else around to correct me; I would like to learn book-binding; I would like to learn proper type-setting/printing as well as the basics of digital typesetting that I learned in previous jobs.
And the we run into the double-standard because I am pretty sure Miranda isn't a wanker for taking and enjoying a short course on illustration at C. St Martins, and part of me wants to genuinely suggest that Ruthi takes a short art course somewhere so she can pick up drawing again and has a reason to go out regularly and things, and I definitely don't think Ruthi is a wanker. So I'm stumped as to why doing anything that costs money instead of makes money makes me a wanker. I'm stumped as to why I'm mildly convinced that anything I do makes me a wanker. But I can't shake off the idea that anything I engage in which isn't up for sale or entirely passive (reading, watching tv) is somehow wankerdom.