A truth I hold to, which has served me well especially in regards to programming and mathematics, is to say things aloud to other people, making yourself sound like an idiot, and then it will all work out. For example, at my old job, probably what I said the most was Jonathan, I can’t get this UNIX thing to work. Jonathan would come over, I’d hit up for the last command, hit enter, and then it would, of course, work and Jonathan would think I was a complete idiot regarding UNIX (which is also a truth). This also helped when I said they other day that the library didn’t have any copies of Hellgoing in the entire system (province wide) and then I checked ten minutes after I said that, and they now do have one copy with fifteen holds on it (for New Brunswick, that is an insane number of people on hold, generally only reserved for Dan Brown novels and Shopaholic series). So say your stupidity aloud and the universe will smack you down. Perhaps I should write a self-help book suggesting this. Maybe that’s what The Secret is about?
So on the weekend, I was talking to a writer-friend and he said You’ve already been published in journals. What are you really hoping to get out of this course? You are already somewhat successful. And I hemmed and hawed and thought how low the bar for somewhat successful is for writing and got the conversation onto something else.
Then on Monday I got an email from my mentor asking me if I had any concerns regarding the course. So see, the universe coming to smack me down.
My story, the ever-present and soul-sucking Come From Away is getting better. That should be the goal. I’m trying to be Machiavellian in my thinking regarding this because if I get a better story out at the end, then that should be enough, even if I am hating every step of the process. Working on my story now makes me feel sick, actual anxiety induced panickingly sick. (An aside: this is totally me – I leave my job that was making me ill and then I find myself a new way to make myself feel sick. But we’ll put my mental health concerns aside since that isn’t really the point right now.) I trick myself into working, putting Freedom on for short bursts, working at the computer (which I normally hate and write everything out in longhand for as long as possible), doing the focus-only-on-this-page-one-page-isn’t-so-much-you-can-do-it, and then staring out the window at the backyard for twenty, thirty minutes at a time rather than type one word.
But my story is getting better. That’s the point.
Geoff says maybe I should quit.
No, story is getting better, I say.
Even writing this now, writing about writing about my story is making me anxious. I can feel the vice around my heart start to squeeze.
What did I hope to get out of this? When I’m super honest, I thought maybe I’d make a writing friend, which is sort of pathetic. Maybe this was less about my story and more about being in a small-town now where things are different. Maybe, to mangle Noel Coward, I didn’t want criticism as much as I wanted unqualified praise. Who knows. If there is one thing I have learned about myself is that I make strange, snap decisions that often make my life harder than it needs to be. This course could be one of those snap decisions.
Did I tell my mentor this? No, I made some passing comment, roughly the internet equivalent of chatting about the weather with the people you wait with at the bus-stop, and sent the next chapter. What am I supposed to say? It’s not necessarily the course. A lot of it is me. Maybe I am just not suited for this novel thing. Maybe I need to work up more slowly, intertwined short stories until novel length. I’ve read some good books like that: The Madonnas of Echo Park – and I’ve read a book I should have loved, but didn’t and we just stood awkwardly around like on a bad blind date (The Juliet Stories). But both times, I though, I could do that. Maybe I should do that instead. Pregnancy Scare is a good start. I already have a second story germinating about Randy, a third about Herb, more about the baby getting older. Maybe.
Maybe.
I don’t know what to do. Geoff’s vote is quitting. My vote is riding it out, making Come From Away better but detaching from the situation. My writer friend who asked me What I hoped to get‘s vote is pretty much Why did you even take a course in the first place? I think if I finish, I get a certificate at the end. I do enjoy certificates and it might make up for the fact that I accidentally threw out my Masters (still have undergrad and PhD, but the Masters has gone missing).
Maybe I’m just a short-story person. Maybe that’s what I’ll take out of this. Maybe.