La Vie Boheme

The Chair

Some days the chair feels wrong. Don't get me wrong. I have a great chair. It's a $1450 chair that I got for $80 (no, I didn't miss a decimal point there, that's fourteen hundred dollars). But some days, it's the wrong chair. Logic would suggest that I move. But no, damn it. My butt has to be in this chair every day. Them's the rules.

Some days it's physical. I'm too tired to sit in the chair. I'm too restless to sit in the chair. Other days, it's psychological. I'm not good enough to sit in the chair. I'm wasting my time sitting in the chair. Some days it's a combination of both.

Sometimes on those days, I make myself sit in the chair anyway--cause them's the rules. On those days, I bitch and whine a lot. I sit in the chair and stare blankly into cyberspace until my time is up, like a recalcitrant therapy patient. But it doesn't matter, because I'm sitting in the chair. After all, I know people who dream about sitting in this chair; I damn well better appreciate it.

And I do. I just need to stop being so rigid about it. Getting my butt in the chair every day is a big priority. Climbing into the chair every day is what gives me some structure, some purpose in what would otherwise be my great big unemployed life. But it doesn't have to be exactly the same thing every day, and I can't understand now how I got so hung up on it. My butt's gotta be in a chair every day. Them's the rules. It just doesn't always have to be the same chair.

I think I'm going to go find another chair and see if I can't do more than spend the afternoon staring blankly.

It's 10 am...

I haven't started work on Exile yet this morning, but I did get two stories back out into submission, "Midsummer" (yes, you read that right) and "The Weird Sisters, 2003". Did a lot of soul searching, helped along by the Minions last night, and shelved "Girl Behind the Counter" for now. I'm starting to accept that some things I've written, no matter how well-written, or how much I enjoyed writing them, just either aren't pro-quality or aren't publishable--and that's perfectly fine. I need to stop worrying about how many stories I have in circulation, and just make sure I have the good ones out there.

That said, why is "Midsummer" back out? Because I love it, for one thing. I'm trying one more 'respected' market, and if that falls through, then I'm going to go to non-paying markets. Because I want someone to read it, to enjoy it. I've done as much damage to it as I can. Rewriting isn't going to improve it at this point.

I have learned so much over the past two years. I think my writing has improved in leaps and bounds. The stories I've got going around now, with the exception of "One Song Before I Go", "Weird Sisters", and "An Eye for an Eye" are all nearly two years old. It may be time to let them go and respect them for what they are: stories that taught me about writing.