Email of non-doom.
So since a very kind actual-proper author has said they'd read my novel, they've sent me four emails.
Every time one of these turns up in my inbox, the entirety of my brain tries to curl round and stab itself in a mixture of abortive hope, acute embarrassment and dread. (Because what the fuck was I thinking getting a professional person to read my stuff - is that just moronic or in fact a new and interesting form of self harm?) Looking at the results, I'd have to go with both but rather a lot of the latter.
Each time an email has come in I've been next to sodding juggulating myself.
Why? Because if I can't write then I might as well juggulate myself.
I do a lot of artistic wibble (sew, paint, design, jewellery, silversmith, creative whatever craft) but besides a pittance for sketches etc none of that shit has ever profited me other than make me think I'm doing something mildly useful whilst taking up space and breathing air to no ultimate end. I always hoped writing was different. Always pinned my beliefs on my writing being able to be an actual professional thing, a thing people might pay monies for and discuss for the joy and interest of it.
So this professional opinion is vastly dreaded, appreciated, awaited... As well as a slew of other verbs that don't exist which look to have been invented by Harry Biscuit and mean things like 'in a brilliant terror of expectation as to whether I will vomit from nerves and unexpected pleasant shock or the more usual acute self-loathing and wish to no longer exist.'
So far the emails have comprised of:
1) Dear girl you can't write synopses to save your life
2) You don't mind that I told you that, do you? Chin up - synopses and writing are hard.
3) My computer ate your novel, may I have it again?
4) I'm free for supper later this month.
This is great - all of them have been perfectly meekle emails and it was lovely they were sent.
If only it didn't feel like I was unwinding my guts onto a barbed-wire fence for that time between receiving the email and reading it. (Do I wait, trailing guts? After all it might have only caught my coat or my spleen or something - that's probably okay, right? (Good luck with that.) Or do I just fling myself hence, waiting until impact to know whether I dreamt of falling and awoke in a feather bed (unlikely), felt I was falling and landed on the floor (possible), or I wasn't falling but flying as a prelude to falling - and had caught my lower intestine on some barbed wire and it was now an alarming number of feet outside my body? (This is always the one that seems most likely.)
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And the thing I hate the most? I haven't written anything since sending the story.
My neurons refuse.
Golden age piracy, 18th C London, 19th C America or London, WWI Europe, random faerytale time - all the best times I've had dalliances with before and hope to again... Nope. It's like neurons are all just waiting to file three novels' worth of fiction and more besides into one of two boxes (and likely me besides) and they're not making up any more sentences that I or any other might deem to have emotional resonance until that professional judgement is decided.
Fine. Only one's brain not actually writing is almost as fucking bad as being told you're rubbish at writing...
Errgghh.
This foolishness probably wouldn't be so awful if it wasn't for all the other general life idiocy making my brain melt unpleasantly and unhappily by turns and whatever neuronic ineptitude is occuring that means I can't find solace in my fictions.
Every time one of these turns up in my inbox, the entirety of my brain tries to curl round and stab itself in a mixture of abortive hope, acute embarrassment and dread. (Because what the fuck was I thinking getting a professional person to read my stuff - is that just moronic or in fact a new and interesting form of self harm?) Looking at the results, I'd have to go with both but rather a lot of the latter.
Each time an email has come in I've been next to sodding juggulating myself.
Why? Because if I can't write then I might as well juggulate myself.
I do a lot of artistic wibble (sew, paint, design, jewellery, silversmith, creative whatever craft) but besides a pittance for sketches etc none of that shit has ever profited me other than make me think I'm doing something mildly useful whilst taking up space and breathing air to no ultimate end. I always hoped writing was different. Always pinned my beliefs on my writing being able to be an actual professional thing, a thing people might pay monies for and discuss for the joy and interest of it.
So this professional opinion is vastly dreaded, appreciated, awaited... As well as a slew of other verbs that don't exist which look to have been invented by Harry Biscuit and mean things like 'in a brilliant terror of expectation as to whether I will vomit from nerves and unexpected pleasant shock or the more usual acute self-loathing and wish to no longer exist.'
So far the emails have comprised of:
1) Dear girl you can't write synopses to save your life
2) You don't mind that I told you that, do you? Chin up - synopses and writing are hard.
3) My computer ate your novel, may I have it again?
4) I'm free for supper later this month.
This is great - all of them have been perfectly meekle emails and it was lovely they were sent.
If only it didn't feel like I was unwinding my guts onto a barbed-wire fence for that time between receiving the email and reading it. (Do I wait, trailing guts? After all it might have only caught my coat or my spleen or something - that's probably okay, right? (Good luck with that.) Or do I just fling myself hence, waiting until impact to know whether I dreamt of falling and awoke in a feather bed (unlikely), felt I was falling and landed on the floor (possible), or I wasn't falling but flying as a prelude to falling - and had caught my lower intestine on some barbed wire and it was now an alarming number of feet outside my body? (This is always the one that seems most likely.)
=====
And the thing I hate the most? I haven't written anything since sending the story.
My neurons refuse.
Golden age piracy, 18th C London, 19th C America or London, WWI Europe, random faerytale time - all the best times I've had dalliances with before and hope to again... Nope. It's like neurons are all just waiting to file three novels' worth of fiction and more besides into one of two boxes (and likely me besides) and they're not making up any more sentences that I or any other might deem to have emotional resonance until that professional judgement is decided.
Fine. Only one's brain not actually writing is almost as fucking bad as being told you're rubbish at writing...
Errgghh.
This foolishness probably wouldn't be so awful if it wasn't for all the other general life idiocy making my brain melt unpleasantly and unhappily by turns and whatever neuronic ineptitude is occuring that means I can't find solace in my fictions.