(no subject)
The previous entry, if it made little sense to regular readers, was misplaced into my regular LJ when I intended to post it into artistsway08 where I'm blogging my progress with the 12 week self help book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. Unlike some other self-help books I've used in the past successfully, this one is not just helpful. I have some serious philosophical differences with it. The spirituality of The Artist's Way is based deeply in what I've begun to call the Xtian paradigm, because many of the ideas migrate out of Christianity into sources as apparently opposed as Marxism or secular Western thought or just popular aphorism.
The book is preachy about a generic type of monotheism with a flavor of worship more like traditional Christianity than Islam or Judaism. But enough of the ideas are also found in other sources that I say Xtian.
So I need to filter it carefully because good ideas that I do agree with and want to engrave deeper into my unconscious habits are mingled with ideas that I've already rejected, sometimes as long as 40 or more years ago. I'm not monotheist. I have a passionate pagan faith and I'm not going to start believing my gods don't exist because the author of a self help book is rhetorically tying ideas like "be kind to yourself" to "believe in God" capitalized and treated like it's his nickname. I don't use "God" for a nickname for any god because to do so implies that all the other gods and goddesses are a crock.
The idea of "divine plan" is one that comes out in many sources other than religion, sometimes it's the state doing the planning, sometimes it's society or community that gets held up as more important than doing what you want to with your life. That idea runs very deep in this author's conception and it serves psychologically for those who are Christian to put the social weight of divine permission and even orders ahead of the social pressure of human beings who'd rather they didn't quit their day job and become a crazy artist.
It is no help to me when I already take responsibility for having decided what to do with my life and can consciously remember the process. Most of the things in my life that affect it and cause conflicts are things I couldn't control. I got born with the genes I did and raised with the nutrition and treatment I did and I got fibromyalgia however it is people get fibromyalgia -- it may be some kind of virus causing it -- and those are things I couldn't do anything about that do shape what I do for fun a whole lot. I'm not going to have "bicycle across France" as a personal fantasy of what to do on a vacation. I don't even like vacations. I eventually went on some and it was disappointing to overexert myself but not really wind up coming away with anything permanent to show for it or with any feeling of being rested or recharged, because I was too stressed and overexerted too much just to do it. In a certain sense I'm on permanent vacation anyway being disabled, and looking to leave it behind.
Maybe if I got some success in my writing and threw heart and soul into it for a year or two without stopping or taking a day off other than sick days, I'd get tired of it and want to spend a month relaxing and doing something else. But I'm more likely to want to stay home and immerse in something else like play roleplaying games, get into holiday decorating and celebrating, do this or that which is a lot of fun every step of the way but doesn't actually demand much more body energy than day to day living. When the kids are older, road trips to big SCA events are a lot more satisfying than normal "vacations" that don't have a special event involved.
So that's just me. My habits and tastes are often shaped by my body limits. But I've been working through this book anyway because I do have one huge block that I need to crash through in a big way. That is carrying through and sending out what I've written. I've been disinclined to write partly because I immersed in it and did nothing else for a number of otherwise unlivable years and needed a rest, partly because with all those trunk novels adding a new one to the stack seemed a bit superfluous.
My life right now is great but for one or two things. It was harsh in the past but right now it's about as good as it's going to get -- except for those one or two things. The biggest-- I don't have pro novels out there with my name on it and I'm not in a comfortable rhythm of spitting out one to six of them every year depending on what I'm doing with them. Some are more like the colored pencil twenty hour ACEO -- they take a whole lot of work and a whole lot of fussy perfectionism to make them come out right. Others just wham, hit the page fast and come out ell and one solid edit makes them as good as they can be, they are like the Asian watercolor type of painting where I could think about it for weeks and swish flick, five brushstrokes and it's down there as perfect as it's going to be.
So if there's different processes per novel, fine. That's cool to know about process and it's also good that my writing is an exploration and an adventure every time I do one. That no two will be alike in what leads up to them or how it felt writing them. It's still the one thing I enjoy doing most no matter how many cool artworks I post.
I've moved my printer to the top of my priority list and I'm adjusting the rest of what I do. It can all dovetail together, writing about my hobbies is a perfectly legitimate freelance tactic that gives me cool things to write about. But I'm not going to try to build art up to something I can support myself on.
I had a good discussion with Kitten this afternoon before posting this entry, which is why it saved and restored. She was supportive, in a sort of "grab your broken leg and drag the pieces into place before you realize that's what happened" way, and I feel better about it. She has been waiting for me to screw my head back on about writing because she knows me, and knows I write well, and she's been having success in writing hand over fist with freelance articles about wrought iron furniture and ceramic angels.
It's important to me to accept this in myself and feel it again, to want it that much, to shift my focus back where it's really the most important thing I'm doing. I have the time. I have the resources. I have the motivation, that's what I've been confused about because while I had it -- I had it at a sort of distant remove. Knew it about myself because it was always true but was confused that I didn't feel it. And she nailed it when she said that it's just fear of rejection.
It is but it's also fear that success won't be enough and I won't be able to do it enough and well enough to make a living on it and not wind up throwing myself back into the poverty that I've already experienced. When that is bogus, because my success at it depends first and foremost on my stubbornly doing it till it pays off. She said "fear of rejection" and I automatically responded that I had overcome that fear by sending out stories in batches, so that out of a whole bunch of things, I'd get an acceptance or some acceptances and not care about the rejections. But maybe it's been fear of another sort of rejection -- of personal rejection because I got successful at writing and am happy about it that is the big fear. Her reactions today put that to rest, she and my son in law would like nothing better than to see me get an acceptance on a novel and then blow a wad of spending money on some good steaks and maybe a bottle of merlot to celebrate it.
I know I'm on track because I'm feeling that dread of rejection now instead of stuffing and denying it, and that's all right. I've also just eaten a turkey dinner so I'm tired, so it's all right to remember this doesn't mean snapping my fingers and summoning a printer by Floo Network and creating the story this instant to send it in by owl. What I should do is relax, let the decision sink in, rest or even nap, get up and spend some time every day on my writing distinguishing this from just fooling around. And save up for my printer on what I get in selling ACEOs.
The book is preachy about a generic type of monotheism with a flavor of worship more like traditional Christianity than Islam or Judaism. But enough of the ideas are also found in other sources that I say Xtian.
So I need to filter it carefully because good ideas that I do agree with and want to engrave deeper into my unconscious habits are mingled with ideas that I've already rejected, sometimes as long as 40 or more years ago. I'm not monotheist. I have a passionate pagan faith and I'm not going to start believing my gods don't exist because the author of a self help book is rhetorically tying ideas like "be kind to yourself" to "believe in God" capitalized and treated like it's his nickname. I don't use "God" for a nickname for any god because to do so implies that all the other gods and goddesses are a crock.
The idea of "divine plan" is one that comes out in many sources other than religion, sometimes it's the state doing the planning, sometimes it's society or community that gets held up as more important than doing what you want to with your life. That idea runs very deep in this author's conception and it serves psychologically for those who are Christian to put the social weight of divine permission and even orders ahead of the social pressure of human beings who'd rather they didn't quit their day job and become a crazy artist.
It is no help to me when I already take responsibility for having decided what to do with my life and can consciously remember the process. Most of the things in my life that affect it and cause conflicts are things I couldn't control. I got born with the genes I did and raised with the nutrition and treatment I did and I got fibromyalgia however it is people get fibromyalgia -- it may be some kind of virus causing it -- and those are things I couldn't do anything about that do shape what I do for fun a whole lot. I'm not going to have "bicycle across France" as a personal fantasy of what to do on a vacation. I don't even like vacations. I eventually went on some and it was disappointing to overexert myself but not really wind up coming away with anything permanent to show for it or with any feeling of being rested or recharged, because I was too stressed and overexerted too much just to do it. In a certain sense I'm on permanent vacation anyway being disabled, and looking to leave it behind.
Maybe if I got some success in my writing and threw heart and soul into it for a year or two without stopping or taking a day off other than sick days, I'd get tired of it and want to spend a month relaxing and doing something else. But I'm more likely to want to stay home and immerse in something else like play roleplaying games, get into holiday decorating and celebrating, do this or that which is a lot of fun every step of the way but doesn't actually demand much more body energy than day to day living. When the kids are older, road trips to big SCA events are a lot more satisfying than normal "vacations" that don't have a special event involved.
So that's just me. My habits and tastes are often shaped by my body limits. But I've been working through this book anyway because I do have one huge block that I need to crash through in a big way. That is carrying through and sending out what I've written. I've been disinclined to write partly because I immersed in it and did nothing else for a number of otherwise unlivable years and needed a rest, partly because with all those trunk novels adding a new one to the stack seemed a bit superfluous.
My life right now is great but for one or two things. It was harsh in the past but right now it's about as good as it's going to get -- except for those one or two things. The biggest-- I don't have pro novels out there with my name on it and I'm not in a comfortable rhythm of spitting out one to six of them every year depending on what I'm doing with them. Some are more like the colored pencil twenty hour ACEO -- they take a whole lot of work and a whole lot of fussy perfectionism to make them come out right. Others just wham, hit the page fast and come out ell and one solid edit makes them as good as they can be, they are like the Asian watercolor type of painting where I could think about it for weeks and swish flick, five brushstrokes and it's down there as perfect as it's going to be.
So if there's different processes per novel, fine. That's cool to know about process and it's also good that my writing is an exploration and an adventure every time I do one. That no two will be alike in what leads up to them or how it felt writing them. It's still the one thing I enjoy doing most no matter how many cool artworks I post.
I've moved my printer to the top of my priority list and I'm adjusting the rest of what I do. It can all dovetail together, writing about my hobbies is a perfectly legitimate freelance tactic that gives me cool things to write about. But I'm not going to try to build art up to something I can support myself on.
I had a good discussion with Kitten this afternoon before posting this entry, which is why it saved and restored. She was supportive, in a sort of "grab your broken leg and drag the pieces into place before you realize that's what happened" way, and I feel better about it. She has been waiting for me to screw my head back on about writing because she knows me, and knows I write well, and she's been having success in writing hand over fist with freelance articles about wrought iron furniture and ceramic angels.
It's important to me to accept this in myself and feel it again, to want it that much, to shift my focus back where it's really the most important thing I'm doing. I have the time. I have the resources. I have the motivation, that's what I've been confused about because while I had it -- I had it at a sort of distant remove. Knew it about myself because it was always true but was confused that I didn't feel it. And she nailed it when she said that it's just fear of rejection.
It is but it's also fear that success won't be enough and I won't be able to do it enough and well enough to make a living on it and not wind up throwing myself back into the poverty that I've already experienced. When that is bogus, because my success at it depends first and foremost on my stubbornly doing it till it pays off. She said "fear of rejection" and I automatically responded that I had overcome that fear by sending out stories in batches, so that out of a whole bunch of things, I'd get an acceptance or some acceptances and not care about the rejections. But maybe it's been fear of another sort of rejection -- of personal rejection because I got successful at writing and am happy about it that is the big fear. Her reactions today put that to rest, she and my son in law would like nothing better than to see me get an acceptance on a novel and then blow a wad of spending money on some good steaks and maybe a bottle of merlot to celebrate it.
I know I'm on track because I'm feeling that dread of rejection now instead of stuffing and denying it, and that's all right. I've also just eaten a turkey dinner so I'm tired, so it's all right to remember this doesn't mean snapping my fingers and summoning a printer by Floo Network and creating the story this instant to send it in by owl. What I should do is relax, let the decision sink in, rest or even nap, get up and spend some time every day on my writing distinguishing this from just fooling around. And save up for my printer on what I get in selling ACEOs.