Heya. Feeling better, though still a bit overwhelmed. I've been asking my writer groups for advice and they've been giving me publishers, so I guess the next step is to put the names in a list and draft a proposal. It just feels so arrogant -- saying, "I think you should publish my stories and poems 'cause I think they're good and I think they'd sell." I guess it's no more than what I've done sending stories to magazines, but it just feels so much bigger...
I was feeling so down yesterday that I not only skipped dance class but had dinner at MacDonald's. Paying for it now, as I don't feel nearly as healthy as I should. I should know better. Oh well -- everyone slides sometimes.
Found some inspirational reading at Border's yesterday, from a book by Bonnie Friedman called Writing Past Dark. (Also sat there and read the new Tanya Huff book, No Quarter -- much fun. :-) Here's a sample:
"'Why do we seek fame?' a student asks the spiritual teacher Krishnamurti, according to a book entitled Think on These Things.
'Have you ever thought about it?' he responds. "We want to be famous as a writer, as a poet, as a painter, as a politician, as a singer, or what you will. Why? Because we really don't love what we are doing. If you loved to sing, or to paint, or to write poems -- if you really loved it -- you would not be concerned with whether you are famous or not...Our present education is rotten because it teaches us to love success and not what we are doing. The result has become more important than the action.
'You know,' he continues, 'It is good to hide your brilliance under a bushel, to be anonymous, to love what you are doing and not to show off. It is good to be kind without a name. That does not make you famous, it does not cause your photograph to appear in the newspapers. Politicians do not come to your door. You are just a creative human being living anonymously, and in that there is richness and great beauty.'
"Just one thing saves me from envy: returning to my work. My desk is a quiet place. My hours there are like panes of clear glass. I sit down and try to hear my characters....Theirs is a separate world that waits while I rush about, fixing meals, making beds, getting jealous and unjealous and maybe jealous again....
"Envy is a con man, a tugger at your sleeve, a knocker at your door. Let me in for just a moment, it says, for just one moment of your time. It claims to tell the truth; it craves attention. The more you listen to it, the more you believe, the more you think you must listen. You must get the info on who is out there, how young the competition is, where they've been reviewed, what they've won, and what that means about you. The antidote to envy is one's own work. Always one's own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it. The answers you want can come only from the work itself. It drives the spooks away."
Long, I know, but worth reading. Reminding me of uncomfortable truths. I am too fond of the spotlight, I think, and excuse myself by saying it's my nature. The lights are fine, as long as they don't get in the way of your work.