I suppose I should premise this post with the fact that I’ve been excessively busy for the last few months, and that’s why I haven’t posted anything. The truth is, I’ve been pretty overwhelmed since around October, and I’m starting to deal with it now. I’ve been sinking myself into some projects, doing some new things, and spending time in rather unhealthy ways that seemed to be productive at the time. At the time. That’s the key phrase there, and it has a lot to do with the anger bender I think I’m about to go on.
Little is worse for an author than losing the self value of their words. I know that there are plenty of people out there who call themselves artists who may or may not think that it lends credibility to their works by saying “oh this sucks. It’s not worth a [expletive]. I can’t believe I put time into it.” For the record, I’m not calling anyone out on this specifically, but that is obnoxious. Because nine times out of ten they’ll pass what they did on for critique anyway.
This is either the most manipulative method of getting someone to read the thing you think they won’t be interested in, or you’re putting up a wall to protect yourself from the possibility that they may not like what you did. So take some [expletive] pride in your own work. If you really think it’s crap, do better and then show people. Otherwise don’t waste our time with it. I know that there’s a lot of stuff in my works that I’d like to do better, so I keep trying. I don’t feel the need to show off an unfinished project. Sometimes that means things don’t see the light of day.
Sometimes that means that I deal with the consequences of looking forward to something that’s never going to happen.
Sometimes that means I’m disappointed. And then I have to deal with that. And that sucks. But it sure doesn’t suck nearly as much as sitting around, and waiting for everything to be done itself. Assertiveness is a great policy. Take action over the things that you want. Go out there and [expletive] grab it. Demand it. Point at the nearest person with a copy of your completed work and say “YOU! Read this thing I wrote.” Then, when they disappoint you by giving you a reaction other than what you were expecting, take it and work with it. Did you want this specific person to be impressed by the thing you did? So much so that you’d change everything that you did to impress them?
If you said yes, then the thing that you were working on wasn’t nearly as important to you as the opinion of the other person, and you are working on the wrong thing.
I know I was. And that’s where all that time went.
— Vid