Got Ugly Voices? Kick Their Teeth In!

It still happens, every single time. Whether I'm submitting a poem to a contest, writing a query for my latest revised novel, or pressing "send" on a job proposal through a free-lance writing site, I hear those ugly voices.

You know them. If you are human, you have heard them yourself.

Mine are vicious. They say things like, "You know nobody's going to hire you," and "It's not like your novel is even worth reading," and "Your poetry/writing/blogging/hair/talent/voice/etc. just SUCKS!" They are insidious, taking little fears and blowing them up into cataclysms, trying to convince me that this one e-mail submission will absolutely RUIN my chances of EVER making it in the real publishing world.

Yours are unique to you, I am certain, but they cover the same sort of ground, saying everything they can to tear down your dreams, to keep you from taking chances, to make you crawl into a fetal position on the living room rug and stay there for the rest of your life.

They will drive you insane.

The solution? You KNOW what it is! You have mad karate skills, honed through practice and perseverance. So use those skills, and beat the snot out of these voices. Kick them in the teeth. Pull out their hair. Punch them again and again and again until they fall down or hop out of the ring. This is war.

As they grin at you, slicing at you with fear and criticism, bobbing and weaving, talking their trash, instead of trying out that fetal position, do the very thing they say you can't do. Submit your work. Finish that supposedly "crappy" novel. Write another sucky poem, and another, and another. Practice singing until you are hoarse. Play piano until your hands cramp. Try for that out-of-reach job. Kick them in the teeth enough times, and their teeth will either break into little pieces or they will simply GO AWAY.

Don't go insane. Don't let the voices take over. Don't be afraid. Embrace your fear, accept it for what it is--fear--and go on. I feel that fear every time, but I've decided that the more times I feel it, the more I'm working towards my dreams. I do submit carefully, but the point is that I still submit.

Funny word, submit. I wonder what I'm really submitting to...

My Writing Vacation

Whew! My horrible vacation out here in Washington, waking up to coffee and a fantastic view of Puget Sound, is almost over. It's been rough, I tell you. Walks along the beach, nice restaurants, wedding cake (not mine--after eighteen years that would be gross), sight-seeing, shopping at all the open air farmer's markets, gabbing with old friends and great relatives...

It was hard. Excruciatingly hard. And we only have two more days to finish up the rest of the homemade ice cream before we fly away. Like I said, it's been rough.

The only good thing about it was that I hardly wrote anything. At least not real writing. I've written scads of stuff in my notebooks about my characters for a novel I've been revising. The characters are truly filling themselves out. But will their depth translate into my revision? No idea. I won't let myself work on it until I have the character bugs all figured out. Maybe I'll never work on it again. It's a waste of time anyway.

Oh, and I did write a poem for my newly married MIL, but, remember, my poetry is all crap. Only she and her new husband appreciated it. Then again, they were the only real audience. Kind of like Emily Dickinson writing poetry for herself, and maybe that creepy editor she had a crush on. The stuff made sense to her, I suppose, and she really didn't want to know if it made sense to any of us. So it doesn't. And my poem probably wouldn't mean anything to you, either. I won't even put it in here, or all two of you who ever read this will just mock it in the comments (and I don't take criticism well at all).

I've also been working through research for two different books. For my mermaid novel, I've been researching life cycles and habits of aquatic mammals, disappearances and strange sightings in the Bermuda Triangle, the Spanish slave trade in the Caribbean, and ocean life in general (especially temperature and sea life changes at various depths)... and soon I'll be researching genetics as well, for various reasons I won't name, mainly because I don't want anybody to STEAL MY IDEAS, even if they completely SUCK (and I'm sure they do).

And finally, I just dropped a load of money here at a local bookstore, where I found books on Native American folklore and spirituality, mysterious creatures of the Pacific Northwest, and a bunch of other eerie things that will likely end up in my Thomas novels--which most of you will never read because they will never be published. I've only written one and a half of them so far, and my aspirations for them are about as likely to be realized as I am to win the Georgia state lottery. (Does Georgia even have a lottery? Don't know. Never bought a ticket. Don't intend to, either. I'm stupid that way.)

Wait! How the hell did that happen? All this time I've been on vacation, I'm still working on my writing. God, this sucks! I can't even keep from writing when I want to. When I'm on vacation. When I've promised myself I'm not writing anymore. When it won't get me anywhere. When it's just frustrating and filled with pain.

Pathetic.

At least I can find comfort knowing nobody's got to read it. Ever.

Yeah, I feel better now. Bet you do too.

You Rock!

Man, but you guys ROCK! You've taken this website to heart, and I could not appreciate it more! I put out the call for bad poetry, but you've taken it a step further--NO poetry! Not even some vapid haiku or limerick about a guy named Hammet.

I know why it is, too. You know I suck more than you do. So if you turn in some crappy old poem, you know I'm going to make mine suck more. And you're too competitive, so you don't want me showing you up. So you take the high road. You act all, "I don't have time to write a poem right now. I'm too busy negotiating this four-book deal with Simon & Schuster and checking the upward progress of my first novel on the New York Times Bestseller List."

Of course, you're also thinking, "That Shakespeare thinks she's so great, but I could definitely make a suckier poem than hers, no matter how bad it is." Only you don't have to prove it to me--or anybody--so you just sigh and shake your head at me. Because I care. Because I put out the call to compete. Because I want to be worse than you, but beating me isn't important to you. At all.

I don't matter, do I?

And even better, I got no followers. No commitment. No lavishing of praise where it isn't deserved (because it isn't, and I'm the first person to admit that). Awe-inspiring stuff, really. I can't fathom the nerve, the self-confidence, the sheer grit.

I'm amazed. Even now I'm on the ground groveling in the wake of your awesomeness. I could learn a lot from all of you out there. I should learn. If I did, I wouldn't waste my time posting anything.

I'd love to know what else you rock at. I'm perfectly vile at getting my picture taken--"hag" doesn't do the pictures sufficient justice--but I don't advertise that nearly as much as my writing. I make sure the pictures are rare, so I can shock people when they least expect it.

Yeah.