afraid to be wrong

ieva — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 13:04:17 +0000

Due to my troublemaker nature, I got myself in bigger mess than I expected. So here is what I learned (well, besides the fact that I can full well grow up but dropping trouble-making entirely isn’t going to happen any time soon): the thing that I am truly afraid of when poking the anthill is not being demeaned by people who don’t agree with me, and not being seen as ignorant. This is what pretty much comes with the package, and I don’t really mind even if people that I respect deeply seem to lose that respect for me, if they ever had it.
What I am afraid of is being wrong, retrospectively, in my own eyes.

I have to work on that though, since inevitably I will be wrong sometimes, somewhere, and I have to be able to face my mistakes and move on.

In other news, yesterday I expanded a 700-word scene to 1200-word scene and improved my WIP dramatically by adding several new plot points. Consequently, I don’t quite know how that thing will turn out now (since what I changed in my plans changes pretty much everything).
But that’s all right. That’s training. It seems that I *was* wrong before, thinking that I know how the plot goes, and in all likelihood I’ll turn out being wrong again and again as the plot progresses, and the only way I’m going to finish the book would be acknowledging I was wrong countless times and moving on. Every time, moving on.

Happiness

ieva — Sun, 10 May 2009 22:42:00 +0000

There are countless folks who have deliberately (or more or less by bad luck) been miserable and somehow through that achieved artistic mastery (or at least so they or their biographers say). Scary to think about all the people who have been miserable in order to achieve mastery and haven’t succeeded while they could, theoretically, been happy and satisfied with lesser goals.
However, misery doesn’t work too well for me. It didn’t when I screwed up my love life to get more emotions, it didn’t when I felt I’m too “talented” to get a regular job, it doesn’t now when I’m driving myself crazy taking up countless commitments and then beating myself up for not meeting my own expectations. Or simply driving myself crazy with no reason or excuse at all. Sure, it gives me very interesting nightmares and spices up my marriage with new, inventive conflicts, but it doesn’t do anything useful for my writing. Nor for my job or for my kids or for my husband and friends.
On the other hand, when I’m happy I work better and I am nicer to people and sometimes I write and sometimes I don’t but either way I feel good. Sure, I don’t accomplish everything I’ve promised to and I fail in most idiotic ways, but well, at least I don’t spend much time obsessing about it.

Guess what promise I’m making today.

ieva melgalve » accomplishments

afraid to be wrong

Happiness