Wednesday's Child

You've probably heard this poem before:

Monday's child is fair of face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for a living,
But the child that's born on the Sabbath day,
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

I was born on a Saturday, for what it's worth. But the reason this sprang to mind is that today's post does not promise to be an especially upbeat one. I am definitely feeling like Wednesday's child today. Now, I'm going to try to keep myself from sinking into actual woe and avoid a pity party, but Monday's positive outlook has been replaced by a cloud of crushing realities. And if you prefer me in my sunnier and funnier moods, I recommend coming back another day!

So, here are the things that have dampened my enthusiasm over the past few days.

1. I'm overwhelmed. With work, family, writing, and with just day-to-day living (groceries, cooking, cleaning, laundry, even BREATHING seems like a chore lately). It's crushing me. And it's not like there's a piece I can jettison. Well, except for the writing, which obviously I don't HAVE TO do in any objective sense. Except that I have to do it for my sanity, which brings me to the next issue.
   
2. I haven't been writing the past few days. After an awesome flurry last week, and despite the fact that the words are right there when I walk away from the computer, when I sit down to write them, I lose them. And this is because...
   
3. I've lost my emotional space for writing. Because I'm so overwhelmed, I feel guilty about any time I devote to writing. This is not helped by the fact that my writing doesn't do anything for anybody except me (although maybe my CPs would kindly disagree by saying that it does something for them because they like reading my stuff, but this is supposed to a downer blog, remember?). However, given how overwhelmed I feel about all the other aspects of my life, it's hard not to ask myself why the hell I'm spending so much time on writing when:
   
   a) I haven't earned a dime at it.
   b) A realistic assessment of the probabilities suggests I will never earn a dime at it.
   c) I am spending what would otherwise be my family's discretionary capital to support this habit for things like contest entry fees, mailings, web hosting, and--the big Kahuna-conference fees, travel, et.c for National.
   
   This leads directly to #4.
   
4. I was hoping to send out some query letters this week. Some with partials, some without. And then, after I got a very insightful and helpful critique on my query letter from the inimitable and exceptionally talented Annie Dean, I thought, "What the hell am I doing? I could write it exactly as she suggests and the query letter would be fabulous. But do I have a fabulous manuscript to go with it?"
   
   Answer, obviously, was no. Because, while I have a good partial, the current version of the manuscript has several fairly large holes in it where I slashed and burned scenes and now have to reknit everything back together. A task I have been slacking in favor of writing Lady Libertine because I find writing from scratch infinitely more enjoyable than revising.
   
   So, let's say I got a request for a full from someone to whom I sent a partial? What then? I'd be scrambling like a madwoman trying to put something together and I'd know it wouldn't be as good as it would be. And what's the point of sending an agent/editor anything less than the very best manuscript I have to offer (when I finally have it to offer)? Obviously, there isn't one!
   
   This internal dialogue led me to ask myself why I was in such an all-fired hurry to query when I know I'm not ready. And I know. It's because if someone requested my full from my partial or my partial from my query, I'd feel in some sense validated. Like this whole writing thing isn't some gigantic time-and-money sucker that's sapping the emotional life out of me and, by extension, my family.
   
   But that is a suck-ass reason for trying to sell my book before it's ready to be sold. It's a suck-ass way to validate what I'm doing with my time, money, and emotional energy. If I can't think of a better reason for writing than to prove my writing is worthwhile by some external measure, it probably is a waste.

So, after drenching my CPs' shoulders yesterday with my woes, I came to the conclusion that it's time for me to step back and just let stuff come when it's ready. No more forcing it. If I'm ready to pitch at National, I'm ready. I have my editor and agent appointments, but if I know for sure what I have just isn't up to snuff, I'm cool with canceling them and letting someone who's in a better place have my slot. I'd like to be ready, of course, but I'm not going to pressure myself to have something ready.

Because it's the self-pressure, along with the self-doubt that goes along with the need for external validation, that's sucking the joy out of writing and that, in turn, is sucking the joy out of everything else. I have to write to be happy. That's all I need to know to "justify" doing it. The other stuff will happen when it's good and ready to happen. Forcing it will only make me miserable.

Settling in with all of this hasn't been easy. When I was a teenager and my family got a piano, I gave up on piano lessons very quickly because I didn't want to learn to play piano--I wanted to play it. Now, damn it! But just like learning to play the piano, learning to write a book takes time and practice. You can't rush it. Good things come to those who wait.

So perhaps Wednesday's child should be full of wait.