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...

Getting Sick

My son was a beast for the babysitter yesterday, and at two a.m., I discovered why.

Ear infection. That's pretty much the perfect way for my son to feel out of joint. I treated his ear, then did it again at 4:30 a.m. He's sporting a fever as well, so it's no school for him tomorrow.

That means my busy week is over! Yes, I did have a Zumba class scheduled, along with a work lunch with a local librarian... but I'll have to cancel, so that my little one can snuggle next to me and feel sick at home (instead of coughing on all the kids at school). My nose is starting to run, too. Darn!

The silver lining? Except for sweeping and cleaning bathrooms--which simply can't wait any longer--I get to write ALL day long. That's good, too, since I have a children's story to turn into verse form and a death by chocolate story to write out over the weekend so that I can polish it up next week. Plus I need an OUTLINE for my NaNoWriMo novel.

So, why am I writing on this blog? No idea. I guess I just wanted all of you know the ugly voices have been pretty quiet over the last few days since the last post. And they'll likely grow even quieter, since I'll be snuggling up to my son and my laptop over the next few days.

And a box of kleenex.

BTW, how does one disinfect a laptop?

Not Writing--Cooking

You knew this one was coming. I just wasn't sure when I would post it. But it was the evanescent Natalie Whipple over at Between Fact and Fiction who brought it up, with her delicious-sounding recipe for lime cupcakes. Yum. I can taste them now, and I don't even need to bake them to do so.

Despite being a staunch pescatarian (vegetarian with fishy leanings), I really enjoy cooking. It isn't nearly as time-consuming as grading papers, but it also has some pretty fantastic advantages:

1. People get to eat what I cook, and tell me it tastes good.

2. I get to eat what I cook.

3. It's one more lovely thing to do to keep from writing.

4. Did I mention that I get to eat it?

Since Natalie already handled dessert, I'll take care of the main course:

Kid-Friendly Potato Chip Fish

Ingredients:

several fish fillets, any kind, thawed

mustard

mayonnaise

salt

pepper

2-3 cups salt & vinegar kettle style potato chips (they are a bit thicker than regular)

1. Lay the fish flat on a spray oiled cookie sheet.

2. Mix mustard and mayonnaise together in a little bowl, two parts mayo to one part mustard.

3. Salt and pepper the fish filets, then spread the mayo-mustard mixture on the fish. (Oh, look, I even used alliteration!)

4. In a sealed bag, crunch the chips until they are broken into pieces. Then drop the pieces onto the spread mayo-mustard mixture.

5. Bake at 400 degrees F for 15-20 minutes, or until the chips are a little browned.

And that's it. Of course, the whole prep for this, including oven time, is only about a half hour, so I'll have to make those lime cupcakes, too. Anything to avoid dragging out that novel!

What favorite recipes do you use to keep from writing? If you have them posted somewhere, give me the link. And don't worry, if you hate cooking, I have plenty of other ways to keep from writing.

Not Writing--EDITING

When I taught classes full time--which accounts for most of the last 18 years, even while rearing babies (yes, the term really is "rearing," an appropriate term for at least the first 2-3 years, when caring for the baby's rear is one of one's primary tasks)--I often used grading papers as an excuse to NOT write.

The excuse worked. Really well. Anybody would believe me. All I had to do is show my husband the ream of papers I'd brought home to dissect, and he'd shake his head sympathetically. And grading had to come first, too. After all, I got paid to grade papers. And writing, at least at this point, pays very little.

That knocked writing out all over the place. No way I can possibly do NaNoWriMo with all of this on my plate. Nightly quizzes, rough drafts, final projects, mini-essays. I was an English teacher, after all. Couldn't exactly run my papers through a scan-tron machine. (Any of you students and teachers should know what those are, the machines that read the sheets students fill little dots on. And they read tests zippingly, digesting and scoring 30 of them in a minute.)

I felt just like Cinderella, unable to go to the ball until I could get all my work done, find a suitable dress to wear, etc. So I sat around in my ashes, with my little purple pen out, grading away whole weekends at a time.

It was nice.

Only now I'm not teaching. And my house is pretty much all remodeled. Sure, I have a few excuses, but nothing nearly as good as grading. I've been reaching out, scrambling to find anything to keep from writing. After all, writing is a waste of time, isn't it? Hardly anybody ever sells a book, and even if they do it won't be successful, right?

I had to find some other way to fill the time. And now I have. I'm editing. For pay. This will be the third novel I've edited for money, though I have worked on many a friend's novel free of charge. Editing's a bit different from just being a beta reader. It's more in-depth, for it may be the last time anyone besides the author reads a book before it's published. Important stuff. Wouldn't want to miss a single typo or extra comma. What if characters close a door three times on a single page, but never open it? What if the ending is confusing?

And editing is FUN. No grade to assign at the end, and I know the author is serious enough to hire an editor, so I know my comments will have a positive effect on the final project. Nice. Rewarding. Time-consuming.

So I have finally found something to keep me from writing. I'm just sorry it's a temporary fix. In a few weeks, at the latest, I'll be done with the edit. I'll just have to find some other way to wallow in the ashes a bit more. Any ideas?

Not Writing--TILING

This summer I spent most of my time not writing. I did it really well, too. I hardly wrote at all! The main way I managed it was by filling my life with other projects to keep myself from writing. In other words, every day I listed out things I could do to avoid writing, and I prioritized them, making them more important than writing, so that at the end of the day I might manage to get most of those tasks done, but my writing remained unwritten.

I don't like to brag, but I did a fine job of it. Laundry alone helps, as do the ever-present dishes, sweeping, paying bills, grocery shopping, vacuuming, cleaning out the litter box, and other lovely chores. But I couldn't have done it without the bigger projects. One that took up most of the month of June was TILING. If you're looking for a way to avoid writing, this is one I suggest.

It does have drawbacks. My nails are still horrible, I got grout in my hair, on my clothes, and stuck to my arms, my house was trashed the whole time, and I hated cutting tile, but the finished product is undeniably good.

I was even more fortunate that I had a butler's pantry and hutch area to tile as well. Here's the completed butler's pantry wall, which I coordinated with the kitchen tile.

So there it is! Don't want to write! Tile instead! It'll take forever and make a big mess, and your fingers will be too scraped up and sore to write. It sure worked for me!

I hope to be able to post a bunch of other things I've been doing to avoid writing soon. I'd do this more often, but I'm not supposed to be writing, after all....