My case in point is my friend Becky. She found my blog last week and in the process of trying to post a comment here she created a blog for herself, and has flung herself into the blogging world gung-ho and with all guns blazing. (See the link on the left to Bex's Madcap Family). I think she has posted about 10 times in the last 5 days or something. But what's niggling me is that she is BLOODY GOOD AT IT!!! I'm sooo jealous. Her posts are interesting and funny and they are making me feel inadequate!! (Don't stop Becky - I'm not annoyed at you personally, I just wish I could be as good). What's worse is that when I left my job where Becky works, I went off telling everyone I was going to write a book, and it hasn't happened. I have done 25,000 words which is an achievement in itself but have got stuck and distracted by other things, mostly knitting.
My husband did the same thing to me a few years ago, when I previously decided I was going to be "a writer". I wrote a couple of short stories, which I didn't do much with but I thought they were quite good at the time. Then along comes Colin, writes one story, sends it off and promptly gets published!! Grrrrrr!! I didn't write anything again for a good few years.
However, I am not going to stop blogging cos I really enjoy it, and keep up the good work Becky, I love reading your posts. I will get back to the book too.
Last Thursday evening we decided to pop up to Border's to get a Starbuck's after dinner. I had a good old nosey through the knitting books but despite spending probably over an hour there, I came out empty handed. This wouldn't do, so Friday morning before coming to work I went onto The Book Depository's website and ordered some books at much cheaper than shop prices and with free P+P to boot. Two of them came today. One is The Knitter's Handbook and is very glossy!! The other is The Knitting Answer Book.
Hopefully these should help me either when I have a disaster of if I want to try to make a design up myself. I need to have a good look through them first though.
Today I did the basic First Aid course at work. The morning really consisted of watching everyone else's bottoms bouncing about as they did chest compressions on the dummy and hoping mine didn't look the same to them when I did it. Then we groped each other for a while to check if we had any broken bones and finally a bit of bondage as we tied each other up with bandages. I'm not sure if I learned anything at all!!
5 comments:
Still being a grumpy-bum then? :P
Knit less and write more. Do what you want to :) And you're better at writing than you think.
I have The Knitter's Handbook, it's very scary, lol.
I hope you find your writing mojo again.
Yeah - that Montse Stanley, you'd better do what she says, or else! :0
Well, I would say it's generous of you to encourage those around you in the activities you enjoy. And I would also say that you are probably your own strongest critic. But isn't that natural?
I think our best efforts come when we aren't comparing ourselves to outside influences--what others are doing, how they're doing it, whether we measure up to them or not. We have to be able to shut out that "noise" and dedicate ourselves to scratching the itch.
After all, you never know why, for example, someone's story might get published--it could have to do with the topic the publisher was in the market for, or who it was that read it that day, or other factors not even related to the writing. Go back and look at your stories. Edit and send them--or write new ones. The thing is, it can be painful if others don't appreciate work you've done, which you've work so hard to complete. Maybe you just need to become more calloused to that possibility. I hate to suggest that to anyone--I'm not suggesting losing optimism or ambition.
But you also have to look at what you've accomplished, yourself. There's some reason people come back to read your blog. Your imagery is pretty vivid. And, best of all, you write in complete sentences. ;)
Nina - such wise words. That is why I am DREADING you starting your blog ;o)
Seahorse - I think we are talking about a different book, mine is by Eleanor van Zandt. I'll check out the other one though!!
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