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at about 7.30 this evening i lay down to nap because i was feeling so unwell. now it is midnight fifteen and i'm awake.
rereading old entries and discovering that they are actually quite well-written makes me indescribably happy. this year has been a dry season. while i've written a fair bit of fic, none of it has seen the light of anyone's screen except
catie56's. i've completed nothing. i am actually considering not signing up for yuletide this year because i'm frightened of making a dreadful mess of it. it's one thing to sign up for a fest and end up with nothing; signing up to write a gift for someone is a commitment and should be a joy, not a feared burden.
part of the problem is that i do look back on older writing and, with the perspective of distance, i'm able to see the quality there. and i'm at once amazed that i did that, and utterly certain i'll never be able to do it again. anything i write now will surely be inferior to whatever came before.
the substance of my journal has changed a lot since i began doing this in 1999. and it's a valuable and interesting history for me to trace, which has always been my purpose. in one sense, i think it may have been a mistake to shift my fannish writing to
borrowedfable. i look at older entries where i've written about how my experience of fandom has intersected with more personal aspects of my life, and i wonder if i now express those intersections much less, or in lesser ways, because the spaces in which i enact them are separate.
i also continue to be uneasy about the whole friends/circle/commenting thing. my circle is small these days; i get relatively few comments. and i've realised it's not the having comments on rather than off that's the problem. what i miss are those two years, before i discovered livejournal, when i was writing on my own site, not knowing who was reading, or if even anyone was. i do not, however, miss all the coding. but there was a certain mental freedom in that lack of awareness. and while i love dreamwidth (i really do), i wish there was a way i could have that back.
i'm not sure it really makes any sense. i know i'm odd and atypical for often not wanting comments on my fiction. more than once i've turned off commenting altogether, or posted to ephemeral with no email address attached, so that no one could contact me without some effort. it's not that i don't want constructive criticism -- i do! few things give me more pleasure than to discuss what i've written and learn what i did right and what needs improvement.
what i can't take, though, what is actually quite damaging to my mental health, is having that expectation that there will be comments. and i will have to do something with them mentally. i will have to make space for them internally and create a place where i can respond to them without feeling like i'm choking on dread. it probably seems like these two states are irreconcilable, and honestly i have no idea how they coexist in my head. i just know that they do.
i really have no idea why i'm crying now. just that this is very distressing to me and has been for a long time in this context. my whole life, in other ways. i am always braced for impact. for some reason it's worse when that impact is positive.
at some point i really think this entry had a point. but along the way i seem to have lost it, as i so often do. i guess it goes something like:
tl;dr what if i never write anything good ever again? and also my brain is problematic.
--
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth. If you feel inclined, comment there using OpenID.
rereading old entries and discovering that they are actually quite well-written makes me indescribably happy. this year has been a dry season. while i've written a fair bit of fic, none of it has seen the light of anyone's screen except
catie56's. i've completed nothing. i am actually considering not signing up for yuletide this year because i'm frightened of making a dreadful mess of it. it's one thing to sign up for a fest and end up with nothing; signing up to write a gift for someone is a commitment and should be a joy, not a feared burden.
part of the problem is that i do look back on older writing and, with the perspective of distance, i'm able to see the quality there. and i'm at once amazed that i did that, and utterly certain i'll never be able to do it again. anything i write now will surely be inferior to whatever came before.
the substance of my journal has changed a lot since i began doing this in 1999. and it's a valuable and interesting history for me to trace, which has always been my purpose. in one sense, i think it may have been a mistake to shift my fannish writing to
borrowedfable. i look at older entries where i've written about how my experience of fandom has intersected with more personal aspects of my life, and i wonder if i now express those intersections much less, or in lesser ways, because the spaces in which i enact them are separate.
i also continue to be uneasy about the whole friends/circle/commenting thing. my circle is small these days; i get relatively few comments. and i've realised it's not the having comments on rather than off that's the problem. what i miss are those two years, before i discovered livejournal, when i was writing on my own site, not knowing who was reading, or if even anyone was. i do not, however, miss all the coding. but there was a certain mental freedom in that lack of awareness. and while i love dreamwidth (i really do), i wish there was a way i could have that back.
i'm not sure it really makes any sense. i know i'm odd and atypical for often not wanting comments on my fiction. more than once i've turned off commenting altogether, or posted to ephemeral with no email address attached, so that no one could contact me without some effort. it's not that i don't want constructive criticism -- i do! few things give me more pleasure than to discuss what i've written and learn what i did right and what needs improvement.
what i can't take, though, what is actually quite damaging to my mental health, is having that expectation that there will be comments. and i will have to do something with them mentally. i will have to make space for them internally and create a place where i can respond to them without feeling like i'm choking on dread. it probably seems like these two states are irreconcilable, and honestly i have no idea how they coexist in my head. i just know that they do.
i really have no idea why i'm crying now. just that this is very distressing to me and has been for a long time in this context. my whole life, in other ways. i am always braced for impact. for some reason it's worse when that impact is positive.
at some point i really think this entry had a point. but along the way i seem to have lost it, as i so often do. i guess it goes something like:
tl;dr what if i never write anything good ever again? and also my brain is problematic.
--
This entry was originally posted at Dreamwidth. If you feel inclined, comment there using OpenID.