Interesting point of view…

Even if it doesn’t quite describe me. I don’t fly from project to project as she describes here, but, this describes where I’m at novel-wise, minus the “restless,” “painful” and the mind “betraying me”:-

When I begin working on a project, I am so passionate about it at the beginning – I write like the paper is on fire. Somewhere along the way it becomes a chore and then the hard work begins. The words don’t flow, I get restless, the writing becomes painful and then my mind betrays me.

This is the part where people will tell you writing’s work.

It is.

The rub starts where you have to keep from getting discouraged. You wanna know your stuff’s good. Solid. Worthwhile. Etc.

Then you wonder, doubt, wonder, get some words, doubt, put it down, pick it up, ponder plot, wonder about if you can finish the sonofabitch.

‘Skuze mah Francais.

(I may have inadvertently slipped some current info on my state of mind..)

I’d ask forgiveness, but this is my blog…. rite?

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Just read “The Taming”…

So you’re banging your head against plot and story, hoping to bleed words, and then you read Kini Ibura Salaam’s “The Taming” and you wonder if you can do the same. Then you read that she says you probably can, someday… https://www.facebook.com/kiiniibura/posts/601766866521942

I think we forget that we once crawled, stumbled, and fell when learning to walk. So when we see someone else soaring, we look up at them in awe, certain we could never do what they’re doing. Mastery is a game of repetition over time. Growth happens incrementally. Then one day, you look up and you are doing it. Actually doing what you couldn’t before.

 

Read.

Comedy relief

Ran across this.

Best YouTube comment:-

I wont eat any octopus from now on !!!

I simply cant eat someone even more intelligent than me since I gave up understanding the the cans and bins system my wife has created in the kitchen

 

Runner up:-

I for one welcome our new octopus overlords.

Another:-

Is the distracting horror film music really necessary?

( …O_o )

… and, of course, some oaf who just… simply doesn’t get it…

YOU IDIOT OCTOPUSES WONT EVER BE OUR OVERLORDS THEY ARE JUST STUPID ANIMALS THAT LAK A SOUL UNLIKE US HUMANS WHO HAVE A SOUL AND WAS DESIGNED BY GOD TO BE LIKE GOD WHO IS THE SMARTEST OF ALL! OCTOPUSES WILL NEVER TAKE OVER

The reply:-

And it’s mindsets like that which shall leave us defenseless when our squishy eight-legged overlords rise from the sea!

 

Threatening to be more entertaining than the video itself.

…Did you SEE how visibly and physically excited the octopus got…

My two cents (and admittedly, knee-jerk reaction) to finding about the existence of the “Dark Girls” documentary

This is the problem that I see here, “Dark Girls” documentary and all: Western society’s “dark” is the SKIN TONE of the AVERAGE black person on the PLANET EARTH. I don’t consider myself dark. And you sure as hell won’t find me starting to, either. I’m average.

A.V.E.R.A.G.E.

On the few occasions when I’ve heard people say to my face that I’m “dark-skinned”, I literally have to stop and take stock, because it’s like they said something in a foreign language I haven’t learned. It doesn’t compute, or impact. Other than to irritate. As in tolerating an improbable asshat comment.

I’ll tell you why.

In my family, I’m the average skin tone. In the Caribbean, I’m the average skin tone. In Trinidad where I grew up, with its virtual 1/2 Black 1/2 East Indian population, I’m STILL the average skin tone.

Ditto Africa.

So now that I’ve gotten my knee jerk reaction off my chest, I’ll rest.

(EDIT: adding that I did not grow up being, and still am not, accustomed to being referred to by the colour of my skin.)

Hope the fact that I’m actually average doesn’t come as a shock to y’all.

If so, tough.

Deal.

For the followers/ readers of my blog

How did you folks find/ find out about my blog?

Wondering.

I hear ya… preaching to the choir…

These words.

And THIS:-

…Because then the bad thoughts creep in: What if I can’t write it? What if I’m just not good enough/smart enough/fast enough/clever enough? Dumb. Messy. Wrong. Slow. Fraud. Hack.  

The bad thoughts are paralyzing. They lock up your thinking. And so much of writing is thinking. Thinking takes TIME…

Let me tell you, the bad thoughts paralyze. I run online to friends. They give me a shot in the arm, even as I might look about me and go, “…REALLY?…”

She continues:-

…They don’t tell you that you’ll be sitting in a restaurant smiling politely at your dinner companions nodding along as you pretend to listen while secretly asking yourself, “Does that thing I’m doing with the dog in Chapter Three really work?”…

Yup.

…I can only try to be patient with myself, to remember how much I love writing and… that I am working on something that’s really challenging me and forcing me to push into unfamiliar territory as a writer, to adapt and grow and learn new skills. And that it feels really scary because it IS scary.

I only know not to stop swimming.

To know that yer not alone…

And to blast music. I had words today, as well, but to hear a published author say what I am myself going through is so heartening…

Oh. Dear. God.

That this has to be done, at all…

http://amalelmohtar.com/2013/06/13/calling-for-the-expulsion-of-theodore-beale-from-sfwa/

Ron Bassman, Ph.D – Schizophrenia patient

From Ron Bassman – Overcoming the Impossible: My Journey Through Schizophrenia

Another study conducted by the United Nations through the World Health Organization found that people diagnosed with schizophrenia in Third World countries have higher rates of recovery than those who live in First World nations. Why is this? The thinking has been that families in underdeveloped  countries need each member to be productive. Therefore, there may be greater  tolerance for people who look and act differently. These people are necessary to  their families and community. They have value.

 

NEEDS. MOAR. RESEARCH. PLZ. K THX.

Apparently, this particular feeling never goes away…

From David Barnett’s blog post:-

Am I a writer now? I don’t know. I write. I still feel like a massive fraud, like I’m going to be found out any minute, like everyone’s going to point at me and say What the hell do you think you’re doing? How did you expect to get away with this? But, I write. So, number three, young David: Yeah, people like you can end up with your name on the front of a book.

Published and still feeling that way?

Oh, my. (I can relate…)

Snippet

Natasha has trauma and pain. She asks the narrator to make it all go away, but my narrator cannot. She goes out in search of others who can, flirting with danger, potentially with disaster. I had established a “moth-to-the-flame” motif earlier in the Work In Progress; so.

Here:-

My little moth hangs about around trouble.
She finds tragic headlines and heads there, hoping. I find her lingering about beyond the cordoned-off areas of police barriers. She lingers around hoping for a trace of rumour, a taste of the supernatural. She goes away, starving. She haunts troubled neighbourhoods, looking for a scrap of the surreal. She tries befriending the downtrodden, the disenfranchised of the streets, the unscrupulous; but they know their kind and they withdraw from her, suspicious.
Why do you try, little moth, why.