And a Post About Writing

Lately, I've been inspired to blog a little; more than I was for a short while, anyway.  This is in concert with a bit more actual writing, too.  Sadly, it's more detail work than delete work - but it's work.  And, if it's the wrong thing to do, for a writer to write new material, it's still less of a sin than to hold out for deleting and excising - and instead do nothing at all.

There isn't a great deal of new bulk to be accounted for.  Still, to find my brain alive in multiple streams - a reflection of sensation here; the inspiration for building on the foundation there - is satisfying.  And, yes.  Satisfying - not merely a happy tidbit, or piece of contentment.  The full ration, satisfaction.  I get little enough of that.  To have it in my writing is a full-bodied blessing.

I haven't resisted the direction of some of the small streams flowing, those which have nothing to do with Ax but feed the second novel instead.  As with building instead of deletion - I still prefer writing the "wrong" thing to doing nothing at all.  In a way, as an author, I suppose it's something like "any attention is good attention" - any writing, even on something other than what I am supposed to be working on, is writing.



Still, it does frustrate.  I'd had a fantasy, back when I put down querying for revision work, that I would have something redrafted by January.  February is halfway over, and Kristi's truism holds - editing a novel is like killing a dragon with a pocket knife.  I've seen pocket knives do a lot of things, to be sure.  But this thing was 168k words when I started, and it's only lost sixty pages.

Today, I've been distracted.  Oh me, my back hurts.  Yeah, cry me a river, excuse machine.  LIFE is an excuse machine.

Sometimes, it's necessary to sit down and ignore your own whining.

Wishing Life Away

With X as far away as he is ... even having a beautiful home, the best dog in the history of ever, some family - and a job I love ... it is hard, sometimes, not to wish this part would give way to the part where he and I are not so vastly separated.  I realize, he's hardly the first example of this.  All my life, I have spent waiting for the "next part".

An interesting aspect of this is the way it reflects the incredible sense of entitlement and expectation of my culture.  I grew up in a United States in which, by virtue of my birth and education, I presumed it was my right to reach a certain level of socio-economic success.  Heck, it wasn't even so clear a thing as a "right" - it was just this manifest destined given; the spoken *and* implicit evolutionary presumption of American development:  and of my middle class echelon.

The eighties didn't help - nor did the dents in the economy we took with trickle-down and in the 90s.  I simply assumed - for YEARS - I was "paying my dues" and the day was coming I would be more than comfortable.

As it turns out:  I am.  But not because I deserve it "more" - and certainly not because I worked hard for it, for a long time.  I learned how, yes.  I've become a highly accomplished and responsible grownup (even if I refuse to "mature").  But it took *many* years, and is even still a developing tendency.  In my nature, I am an underachiever.

But my refusal to depend on someone else (on a man - or, as much as possible, on my parent(s)) made it an inevitability; I had to sink or swim.  There were no other options; and I found that sinking caused dependencies I turned out to be unfit to tolerate.  So I had to swim.  And I was probably past thirty before I really learned much about how to do this very well.

So, a late bloomer.  The desserts of the kind of entitlement I grew up permeated with.

As proud as I am of the life I've been put in stewardship to live:  I still don't feel I deserve my comfort and success.  Even knowing how many people would pooh-pooh just how "successful" I call myself (she doesn't even have a smart phone - or cable - or a DVR - or a Mac, nor any iDevice of any kind! she drives a car she's paid off, and wears "pre owned" clothing from eBay and thrift stores!), my sense of how abundantly blessed I am is almost embarrassing when I allow myself any perspective at all.  I pay my bills.  I am down to almost no remaining credit debt, and hope to be able to pay it off 100% within two months from now.  I am more than adequately entertained, and materially - even with a couple leaky faucets and floors I dream of having beautifully refinished - is as comfortable as I could dare to ask for.  And, apart from my privilege and education - nobody gave this to me but my blessed ancestry and myself.  The autonomy both resulting in *and* resulting *from* what has been given me is never, ever lost on me.  I am grateful for this perhaps above all other blessings not tied up in the people I love.  And the people I love are deeply entwined with these gifts.

This is the privilege I come from:  that life is so sure to be rich in material and personal blessings, I can wish away the now until my mid-forties, pining away for the "next part" - that part which will be so comfortable, so good, so full of wealth "I can't wait" to get to it ...

This is both the rapture - and the trap - of being a white, middle-class American (of a certain age ... of a certain privilege).

Strange

I *just* cannot bring myself to query research this evening.  Feel like shopping for vintage lamps I have zero intention of buying instead.