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Tired
More messing around with other people's work instead of doing my own...
This was supposed to be somebody writing a 'passive' passage to indicate that the character was feeling helpless, which ended up sounding thoroughly artificial as a result -- generally the case where people are trying to apply a fixed set of rules they don't really understand. I can't say that I really understood where passivity came into it, but I took a few guesses at what was probably supposed to be happening and tried to achieve helplessness by other means (plus fixing the actual errors, and making a few random executive decisions because it seemed to sound better...)
Grabbing onto the rusty steel girder above her head, she wedged one foot onto a warehouse shelf and kicked off frantically with the other, trying to hook her leg over the beam. But the trailing pants that were now far too large for her caught and snagged on a rusty bolt, and she fell back, still clutching on desperately as her foot slipped and she started to dangle.
"No! Help!" She could feel her fingers losing their grip. "Mandy!"
The floor hit her hard as she crashed to the ground, enveloped in a shower of grit, and for a moment she couldn't even move. She lay on her back, weeping, and finally managed to roll over, leaving behind a blurred outline in the black dust.
"I can't." It came out of her as a sob. "I'm so weak. I can't."
Above her the window was empty. Pushing herself up onto her knees, she stared at it, scrubbing her eyes. There was nothing to be seen but sky.
"Mandy! No! Don't leave me!"
If only it were as easy to 'fix' my own! I'm still just about struggling on with Chapter 2 and have finally *almost* reached the scheduled confrontation that was originally the whole point of the chapter -- which is going to end up as an exchange of a couple of lines at most, I think -- but I'm really starting to feel that I've cursed this story by over-promising and publishing in advance, and/or that I shouldn't have started it, and/or that, given my record over the last few years, I've just burned out on writing altogether. It's like pushing through treacle. It really is. And it's so long since there was really any joy in it (but I still think that there are massive patches of Arctic Raoul that are *good* despite everything, which just makes me feel guiltier about not even attempting to do the work on it... among the many, many other things that I feel guilty about not doing).
And I don't know if this constant moral exhaustion is depression, or simple dietary deficiency (my face is really bad at the moment, covered in swollen spots and scabs) or lack of sunlight, or physical exhaustion from disordered sleeping hours and general shortage of sleep, or the side-effects of months of strain and stigmatisation and worry about shortages, or the lack of mental discipline to which I instinctively assign it -- because I jolly well do things when people *make* me do them, or when force of circumstances constrains it. Perhaps I really am inadequate to the task of living alone 365 days in a year (even in the absence of laws enforcing it). Because there is no-one to pick me up when I fall down, or to take up the strain when I'm tired, or even to be annoyed if I leave the washing-up for the next morning or stay up until the small hours and then fail to appear in time for lunch.
(I always did say that I basically needed a good wife...)
The trouble is that most of the things I worry about are things that I'm not even *supposed* to need to worry about, which means that I basically don't qualify for any sympathy for them, and that I can't even mention them without being either criminal and/or deranged (even being stuck on writing fan-fiction about someone's else's characters that you can't publish and shouldn't legally be doing at all isn't a thing you can really explain). And I don't have the luxury of a reassuring echo-chamber either online or offline to repeat back and reinforce my own self-defined identity, or to march around waving libertarian flags of one colour or another and getting worked up over righteous grievances. I can't afford to show any signs of distress at all; I spend my life in a state of pre-emptive defence.
Doing anything at all takes so much effort. I'm just tired -- so tired. And it keeps repeating in my mind; usually when I get haunted by a phrase I can exorcise it by working it into a story ("half a hundred" is still floating around out there somewhere, and "loyal and true"), but this one doesn't offer a lot of possibilities. (Oh, thinking about it I suppose I probably could...)
This was supposed to be somebody writing a 'passive' passage to indicate that the character was feeling helpless, which ended up sounding thoroughly artificial as a result -- generally the case where people are trying to apply a fixed set of rules they don't really understand. I can't say that I really understood where passivity came into it, but I took a few guesses at what was probably supposed to be happening and tried to achieve helplessness by other means (plus fixing the actual errors, and making a few random executive decisions because it seemed to sound better...)
The black haired girl below grabbed a rusty steel beam above her head, pushed her foot on a warehouse shelf, and kicked her leg up. Pants, that were now four sizes too large, snagged on a rusty bolt. Her foot slid and she started to dangle. She cried out, "No! Help!" as fingers above her loosened. "Mandy!" she cried, as the beam left her hands and she slammed onto the floor, enveloped in a shower of grit. She laid on her back, weeping, and finally rolled over, leaving a sweaty outline in the black dust. She pushed up, onto her knees, scrubbed her eyes, and sobbed, "I can't. I'm so weak." She stared up at the empty window, and cried out, "Mandy! No! Don't leave me!"
Grabbing onto the rusty steel girder above her head, she wedged one foot onto a warehouse shelf and kicked off frantically with the other, trying to hook her leg over the beam. But the trailing pants that were now far too large for her caught and snagged on a rusty bolt, and she fell back, still clutching on desperately as her foot slipped and she started to dangle.
"No! Help!" She could feel her fingers losing their grip. "Mandy!"
The floor hit her hard as she crashed to the ground, enveloped in a shower of grit, and for a moment she couldn't even move. She lay on her back, weeping, and finally managed to roll over, leaving behind a blurred outline in the black dust.
"I can't." It came out of her as a sob. "I'm so weak. I can't."
Above her the window was empty. Pushing herself up onto her knees, she stared at it, scrubbing her eyes. There was nothing to be seen but sky.
"Mandy! No! Don't leave me!"
If only it were as easy to 'fix' my own! I'm still just about struggling on with Chapter 2 and have finally *almost* reached the scheduled confrontation that was originally the whole point of the chapter -- which is going to end up as an exchange of a couple of lines at most, I think -- but I'm really starting to feel that I've cursed this story by over-promising and publishing in advance, and/or that I shouldn't have started it, and/or that, given my record over the last few years, I've just burned out on writing altogether. It's like pushing through treacle. It really is. And it's so long since there was really any joy in it (but I still think that there are massive patches of Arctic Raoul that are *good* despite everything, which just makes me feel guiltier about not even attempting to do the work on it... among the many, many other things that I feel guilty about not doing).
And I don't know if this constant moral exhaustion is depression, or simple dietary deficiency (my face is really bad at the moment, covered in swollen spots and scabs) or lack of sunlight, or physical exhaustion from disordered sleeping hours and general shortage of sleep, or the side-effects of months of strain and stigmatisation and worry about shortages, or the lack of mental discipline to which I instinctively assign it -- because I jolly well do things when people *make* me do them, or when force of circumstances constrains it. Perhaps I really am inadequate to the task of living alone 365 days in a year (even in the absence of laws enforcing it). Because there is no-one to pick me up when I fall down, or to take up the strain when I'm tired, or even to be annoyed if I leave the washing-up for the next morning or stay up until the small hours and then fail to appear in time for lunch.
(I always did say that I basically needed a good wife...)
The trouble is that most of the things I worry about are things that I'm not even *supposed* to need to worry about, which means that I basically don't qualify for any sympathy for them, and that I can't even mention them without being either criminal and/or deranged (even being stuck on writing fan-fiction about someone's else's characters that you can't publish and shouldn't legally be doing at all isn't a thing you can really explain). And I don't have the luxury of a reassuring echo-chamber either online or offline to repeat back and reinforce my own self-defined identity, or to march around waving libertarian flags of one colour or another and getting worked up over righteous grievances. I can't afford to show any signs of distress at all; I spend my life in a state of pre-emptive defence.
Doing anything at all takes so much effort. I'm just tired -- so tired. And it keeps repeating in my mind; usually when I get haunted by a phrase I can exorcise it by working it into a story ("half a hundred" is still floating around out there somewhere, and "loyal and true"), but this one doesn't offer a lot of possibilities. (Oh, thinking about it I suppose I probably could...)
no subject
Sounds to me like it's all of those at once. I've been having a rough time of it myself, lately, so I understand a little bit.
Take a break. Take care of yourself. You don't need to justify your own unhappiness. Arctic Raoul and Hertha will still be there when you're feeling better. I sound ridiculous, since you're at least a decade older than me, but I don't know what else to say.
I wish there were something I could do to make you feel better. :(
no subject
The trouble is that -- in my experience -- it doesn't actually work that way; once you let a story go 'off the boil' it's desperately difficult to revive it again. It was probably a mistake to start this one, but having started it I have a responsibility to it.
Arctic Raoul is in serious danger of passing into oblivion and never being published anywhere, on fanfiction.net or elsewhere. The trouble is that it is so much harder to bring myself to edit finished work than it is to do practically anything else. I seem to have two modes of work: 'right now' and 'indefinitely postponed', and if a task misses the first easy moment of impulse (or requires more than a moment's initial effort to get started) then it is in severe danger of never happening at all. I have far, far, far too many unanswered emails, reviews I should have written, bug reports I should have sent in, pieces of mending and ironing and cleaning that have been waiting for months... and I don't even have paid duties to keep me from them. (In fact, ironically, if I had less time I suspect I might achieve more.)
Every day I wake up -- albeit often in the afternoon -- with the resolution that today I will achieve one of those postponed tasks, and yet day by day the weeks slip by. I am just about clinging on to Hertha by the tips of my fingers (she is currently perusing a letter from 'O.G.', though I am not sure where this scene is going) by trying to force myself to take regular walks and to take the manuscript with me; if I left it here to be worked on at the table nothing would happen. Often not very much happens in the course of an hour's walk (and sometimes after a month or so of abysmally slow progress I end up discarding the lot!) Today I went cycling instead, which means I haven't written anything, though I am better exercised -- I was quite pleased with myself last night, but now realise that I'm not sure how to continue.
Unfortunately I feel that I do need to justify my own unhappiness, because I am not 'unhappy' enough to justify neglecting things. It would not cost me anything bar a stamp -- and I laid in a stock for that purpose -- to reply to my brother's letters of this autumn, or to telephone the exceedingly ancient relative who sent me a gift voucher for Christmas despite the fact that I haven't sent her a present or even contacted her in years (and she probably won't be alive next year) All it takes is a bit of 'getting round to it', and I have grown so accustomed to letting things slide if they feel the least bit difficult that, like Bree and Hwin in the Calormene desert, I seem to have lost the power of making *myself* do things if other people don't compel me to do them.
When I was younger I kept acquiring a series of surrogate mothers; now I seem to end up acquiring a succession of surrogate fandom daughters ;-p