Just a Metaphysic Monday!

That's right, it's Metaphysic Monday here at Ye Olde Day Job(TM). Time for deep conversations between reports and calls, pondering the depths of corporate philosophy over the cubicle walls. We've decided that our entire center is one big psychiastric experiment, and we're all lab rats used for the sole purpose of data-gathering. We're expected to go about our maze, preferably without the knowledge that we're in a maze, chasing that nibble of cheese and living our little ratlike lives. The guys in the white coats at Corporate monitor our progress, observe our little rodent hierachies, and jot things down in their steno pads. It's nothing personal--we're just rats, and we can't be expected to understand the things people in white coats write on steno pads.

That's a pretty typical Monday morning in my office.

This is why I need to become a full-time writer. At least then I'll know I'm a rat....

Why I Write

I write because I am NOT a painter. :)

Okay, I come from a family of artists. My mom and her two sisters are professional artist, several of my cousins are professional artists/designers, my dad owns a gallery and paints, my step-mother works in porcelain, and well, it's sort of a family thing.

Me? I am not an artist. I doodle. I scribble. As an artist, I make a very good singer. As a painter, I make a pretty darn good writer.

I offer below an illustration. My coworkers at The Day Job(TM) insisted I create this for our Halloween decorations. I call it Drunk Kitty on Posterboard. The media are Dollar Tree paints and White Out.

If I ever quit The Day Job(TM), it won't be to pursue a career in art.

Lessons

I want to have this list by Jessica Zelenko tattooed to my forearm.

Insecurity

I think I need to peruse this article by Jessica Faust at length. Seriously. Insecurity has been my constant companion ever since I decided to start pursuing a professional writing career--insecurity that never existed when I was just writing for fun. More on this later. My day job calls, and frankly, getting fired will not really decrease my stress. :)

I must be on the right track...

I just had a published author threaten to slap me. :0 Okay, not like that...or like that! Just in the "get over yourself, stop overthinking, hellooooo....McFly....." sort of way.

Oh, and in case you think all I do is write? My partner Fey is a fantastic cook. I eat a lot too. Check out her cooking blog Livejournal (Fey Cooks). I was losing weight. Now--not so much....

Sure Path to Insanity

When someone you love/respect/admire compares your writing to a published author, it may not be the best idea to go out and read that author. My writing was recently compared to a very mega-successful novelist out there. I'd heard of her, but never read her stuff. Borrowed a copy of one of her books from a coworker and have been reading through.

So here's where the insanity comes in--(read on for excerps from Deb's brain):

I'm not really loving this book.

It's okay, but the characters are not all that compelling.

Okay, some of it's okay, but not the greatest I've ever read.

Fill-in-the-Blank really thinks I write like *her*?

Is my book hard to get into?

Are my characters flat?

If this is what is selling, am I doing it wrong?

OMG, who the hell am I to think I can do this?

Fill-in-the-Blank is just being kind.

I'm a hack.

I wish I wrote more like Random-Author-I-Happen-To-Like-at-the-Moment. This writer is good--this writer writes *important* stuff. This writer's prose is tight, her characterization is intriquing, plots unobtrusive and natural.

I'm a total hack.

I might as well eat junk food.


This, boys and girls, is why you should never compare your work to others'.

Lesson complete. Have a nice day.

A Room of One's Own

I remember back in college reading that essay by Virginia Woolfe. In effect, she said, for a woman to write she must have an income of no less than 500 pounds and a room of her own. I think my modern equivalent of this has become a roll of quarters and a laptop at the laundromat.

Seriously, I get some of my best work done in those two hours a week I spend waiting for the wash cycle to end, or the dryers to go off. Thanks to the invention of headphones and MP3 music files, I don't really feel obligated to socialize.

I love to write at home, and I do for most of the time. But I have a 40 a week day job, a partner I adore (and find it very hard to ignore), and tons of responsibility.

At the laundromat, I'm just that chick with the lap top who doesn't fold her clothes until she gets home.

I can live with that.