On Sat, Oct 26, 2002 at 12:19:30PM -0700, Quinn Tyler Jackson wrote:

[Pamela writes]

> > Sorry to have been absent from the other fascinating discussion
> > here (and sorry you got hurt, Quinn),
> 
> I'll recover from this ... it's the feeling that sucks more than the
> actual events.

Well, yeah, absent physical damage that's kind of what one is left
with.

> What sucks the most is allowing it eat at me. I can't shake the
> feeling that a "real" writer doesn't let this kind of fecal matter in
> the emotional door.

Since one thing real writers do to exasperating lengths is to
worry that a real writer would not do whatever it is they happen
to be doing, I think you're okay on this.

> I look at bigger tragedies (insert many *real* sob stories here --
> mine and others' -- the big stuff) and say, "This crap is trivial,
> Quinn -- don't be such a drama queen. Don't sweat such small stuff."

I don't think it's especially small.  It's smaller than the end
of the world, but most stuff is.  "Don't sweat the small stuff"
is good advice for a particular class of problems, but I feel that
all too often it's used to pummel people for daring to have
feelings about anything less dramatic than nuclear holocaust.

> But then I realize ... hell, I am more sensitive than I allowed myself
> to admit in the past. This writing thing ... was about ME and my EGO,
> and I drew a line in the sand, daring idiots to cross it ... and when
> they did ... I whined like a two-year-old about it. How utterly gauche
> of me.

Yeah.  Real writers are never gauche.  Uh-huh.


-- 

Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet           (pddb{at}demesne.com)
"I will open my heart to a blank page
   and interview the witnesses."  John M. Ford, "Shared World"

--- Rachel's Little NET2FIDO Gate v 0.9.9.8 Alpha