I still don’t know what I’m doing.
I guess that’s the big thing, ain’t it? The not knowing? I mean, it’s so prevalent through all of my life that’s it’s not funny. The whole massive planning thing, the 10-year, 5-year, 1-year, quarterly and monthly plans, even the weekly shit, that’s just a whole big con to give me some sense of control. But there is no control, there is only chaos loosely bound with the guardrails of checklists and calendars.
I think it’s funny, those people (writers mostly) I talk to who think I’m inspiring. I don’t feel inspiring, I tell them that I don’t feel inspiring. I feel like a fraud— No, “fraud” isn’t the right word. I don’t feel inspiring, I don’t intend to be inspiring so I can’t be a fraud for not pretending to be “inspirational”.
I feel more like a duck in a tornado, just trying to not die. Or maybe not a duck, and maybe not a tornado. Maybe more like a canoe in never-ending rapids. I have some direction, a paddle to keep me away from the rocks, but the water is always rushing forward and I have no choice but to go with it or find a nice little anchor to get out of the way. There could be waterfall at the end, who knows? Or a massive sandbank, or the ocean or… I don’t know, something terrible and/or wonderful. The point is, I’m just here for the ride, doing my best not get smashed on the rocks.
I think I’m doing okay, but there’s so much shit going on. Some of it’s good shit, some of it’s bad shit, some of it is just shit (the bog ordinary kind *ha ha, see what I did there?*) and I just have to deal. Or not, that’s always an option too.
Anyway, I don’t feel very inspirational. I don’t feel like I’ve got my shit together, but people think I do and… well, who am I to rain on their parade, right? Maybe that’s the secret of being “inspirational”, you don’t feel inspirational. The inspiration is for everyone looking in and the truth of it… that’s all mine.
So there.
And this is the point where I run out of things to say, so I just want to revisit that image of me in the canoe in the never-ending rapids, because while that works, it’s not the whole of it. One of things that makes the rapids such a shit are all the other rivers crashing into it.
There’s so much new knowledge, so many other things cropping up in the indie publishing space (let alone the general publishing space, or the intellectual property space, or the AI space… I’m making my own point here) that there’s always something new to learn and/or consider. Just when you think you’re getting a handle on something—or even before you’ve started to get a handle and the gazillion and one things rushing at you—and new river crashes into the one you’re on.
Sometimes it’s a small river, sometimes it’s a big one. Sometimes it’s not a river crashing into you but an offshoot for you to take, but you have to choose what to do about it, how to slot it into the shit you’re already tackling.
Mostly, I choose to focus on the things I set myself in all that fucking planning (the 10-year and the 5-year and yearly shit) and ignore the rest. Or kind of ignore the rest, I make note of it, assign it a place where it could possibly be useful in the future (if at all) and keep steering the course I’ve chosen. At the moment, it’s building my newsletter and reader community, while also attempting to get a handle on the writing thing.
I feel like I (mostly) have a handle, or at least a clear path for the newsletter/community thing, it’s the writing that’s giving me trouble.
It’s always the writing giving me trouble.
This (Bitch-Space) is part of the writing thing, or my solution to the writing thing, and—as with the theme of today’s Bitch-Space—I have no idea what I’m doing. I know what the issue is (critical voice) but how the fuck do I fix it?
I want to write like the wind, I want to the words to flow from my brain to my fingers without filtering through the inner bitch. I want to silence the inner bitch. The inner bitch pisses me off.
But… I don’t know how. I’m hoping that Bitch-Space helps me through it, but even though I write this like the wind (even while hosting an online writing session, go me) I haven’t been able to port that over to the creative/fiction stuff. Why is that? How is this different from fiction? They’re both just words, and I had about as much idea of what I was going to write for this as I do for Woman in White, or any other piece. So… Where’s the rub?
It’s the publishing side of things, ’cause as soon as I finish these thousand or so words, I’m going to post this to my blog. It’ll have just as much chance (let’s be honestly, more chance) of being read than a random piece of fiction (okay, that may be a little harsh, but… I don’t care) so it can’t be the “scared of criticism” thing.
What if it’s the idea that people expect more from fiction than they do of a personal blog post? I… That just doesn’t stand up for me. I mean… Fiction is… made up and this… This is what? Not made up? An opinion piece?
Something to think about.