SandyFerret of Zenith
Jun. 27th, 2018 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoOnce upon a time, before we were married, the Sparrowhawk rented a room in an old house. The other denizens, with one exception, were scary wild men from the UP. They lived in chaotic dumpster-decor. The funny thing was, they all were in pre-med or pre-dental. The pre-dental guy, who I'll call Bill because I have no idea if that was his name or not, at this distance, was six feet four, with a flaming case of acne and a head of wild black curls. I hope he modified his appearance before graduating, because if I'd seen him coming for my teeth, I'd have run shrieking. (The other denizen was a guy from New York who wanted to be a psychiatrist, but he is another story.) When life and its frustrations got to be too much for Bill, he would go out drinking and come back much the worse for wear, with bruised knuckles and swollen eyes from punching it up with a Marine or two. I'm not sure where he found Marines in my college town, but he had a magnetic attraction for service members who were also in a foul humor. Now, I'm six feet four on the inside, but on the outside, I'm only five eight, so his remedies are not available to me, but I do understand the feeling. There are days when you suddenly become sick of everything, and this is one of those days.
I did get out for a walk, and took the Sparrowhawk with me, so that's a double win. I tried to write but it only filled me with despair. There's a form of OCD that afflicts religious people, called scrupulosity. It makes them obsess relentlessly over whether they've committed a sin or not. I think that telling writers severely that you don't want even their query letter if it is not "carefully crafted prose" induces a form of writer's scrupulosity. You write one sentence and stop, because you're already thinking "It isn't good enough." Then the focus of writing becomes not telling a story, but making people like you, which is literally impossible.
I never want to write another email to my sibs about leg wounds. Ever. I'm fed up.
I tried listening to the Paul McCartney carpool karaoke to cheer me up. It was sweet, but all I could think of was, oh, Paul--you got old.
Hot summer day.
My mother's sick in bed.
I'm old, fat, and obscure.
Sick, too--sick of everything but these white roses.
I did get out for a walk, and took the Sparrowhawk with me, so that's a double win. I tried to write but it only filled me with despair. There's a form of OCD that afflicts religious people, called scrupulosity. It makes them obsess relentlessly over whether they've committed a sin or not. I think that telling writers severely that you don't want even their query letter if it is not "carefully crafted prose" induces a form of writer's scrupulosity. You write one sentence and stop, because you're already thinking "It isn't good enough." Then the focus of writing becomes not telling a story, but making people like you, which is literally impossible.
I never want to write another email to my sibs about leg wounds. Ever. I'm fed up.
I tried listening to the Paul McCartney carpool karaoke to cheer me up. It was sweet, but all I could think of was, oh, Paul--you got old.
Hot summer day.
My mother's sick in bed.
I'm old, fat, and obscure.
Sick, too--sick of everything but these white roses.
all the hugs
Date: 2018-06-28 08:25 am (UTC)if you can just sneak past the scrupulosity...