Susan

Today I left the house to go write with a friend, and I took my afternoon dose of my ADHD meds. Completely co-incidentally, I've been able to write for what feels like the first time since 2021, when my writing friends moved away. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Funny how that works.

I aten't dead! I've been... Not writing. Not doing a lot to be honest – lots of video games while watching video essays about video games, because apparently this is who I am now? But also: thinking about writing. And thinking about why I've not been writing. Part of it is task cascade failure; I haven't done x so obviously I can't do y and oh god now z is going too! Part of it is using other things than writing as my work stims. Part of it is constantly being at home where the distractions are and not pulling myself away. But the rest... I think I needed to reset my reviewing brain.

I saw a post about paranoid readings recently and my brain stalled out. Listen, listen —

Essentially, paranoid reading approaches a work — whether it’s a story, tweet, TV show, photograph, or anything else that can be critiqued — from a defensive position. It anticipates bad actors and maliciousness, seeking out clues for them.

I have been doing that. Not just that, but trying to anticipate things that other people would find objectionable so as to pre-empt any "Susan likes this thing and didn't criticise x about it!" judgement. Which, to be clear, has never happened to me. I've seen other people point out things that I missed before, and people who have said that the positives I found in a work didn't cancel out the flaws for them, but if anyone came to me and went "How can you not criticise this thing!" then I've deleted that memory from my brain. Instead, I've somehow created this straw-boogieman in my head that is going to Do Something if I don't correctly highlight all of a protagonist's moral failings. Which is especially fun when you consider that the things that I really love are all about characters who are morally questionable at best and explicitly, deliberately monstrous at worst.

Not decided what to do about this yet! I know the answer is "Just review with your heart and damn the torpedoes," but it's haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaard. I don't think I want to go fully into reparative readings, but... Maybe I can find a mid-ground for myself. Maybe I can write little reviews and build up to having full opinions again. Goal for 2025: that????

(I think everyone I spoke to at Worldcon was just like "Yeah, I miss doing things on the internet" as well. Simultaneously glad and sad that it's not just me.)

For extra fun: I've been looking back at my old files, and genuinely going "Wait, I wrote that?" at some of it. Some of these ideas are great! Some of the jokes are funny! Past me, what were you doing? Didn't you say we were bad at this? Maybe I can... Go back to writing fic????? Maybe reaction shots? The world could be my oyster. If it works: see you again, space cowboys. ♥

I still have no idea what an Orange March is but I know that it woke me up with marching drums so maybe I hate them.

HELLO FRIENDS, I am back from Scotland and trying to get my head back in the game. So far that has looked like forgetting my afternoon meds and staring into the oubliette that is my 4tw file structure to see what's been forgotten there. 

(The answer: SO MANY FUCKING THINGS. Turns out I wrote a shit ton of stuff to almost finished, then either forgot about it or lost it. I had a sorting system, stopped using it. Had an index system briefly, stopped using it. I'm starting to think that there's a common element to all of these problems, you know.)

But hey, once I've finished going through and indexing stuff, I can actually work on finishing and/or posting things, and that'll be nice. Might do a round-up of "Shit that I thought I'd already told you all" but we'll see.

• Stayed up to watch the Hugo Ceremony and oh BOY was that a clusterfuck. It involved George R. R, Martin devoting his entire presentation to being The Ghost of Worldcons Past and being nostalgic about racist/sexist/fascist/sex pest authors from his youth, some incredibly gross and inappropriate jokes, and pre-recorded sections that apparently no one checked for things like "Have the participants's names been pronounced correctly?" and "did the presenter remember the actual description of the category?" Greatly admired R.F. Kuang's speech because not only does she roast the entire publishing industry for being racist and sexist, she also calls out GRRM not pronouncing her name correctly in a video recorded before he did it. anoutlawlife has put together a cut of the stream that skips over the nostalgic circle-jerk that is somehow two hours shorter.


• Went to bed after the fan categories. Congrats to booksmugglers and a thousand hugs to clairerousseau and AdriJjy! But also it was 1:15 and they'd only gotten through four categories in an hour and fifteen minutes, so it was bed time.


• Got up, caught up on the chats and twitter about the award ceremony, and discovered that it somehow got worse after I left. Wrote a thread about how the opportunities that CoNZealand had to not make these mistakes that involved no swearing and no capslock, which I think is proof of either restraint or the degree of my annoyance, considering that I usually use fuck as a fucking comma.


• Been very weepy because a) the idea that I've been batting around for the last few weeks isn't my hyperfocus anymore and this makes me feel lonely(?!?!?!?!), and b) I think my next hyperfocus is going to end up being The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System and my brain has decided that I'm never going to write anything I love as much as MXTX's work.


• Discovered that no, apparently my goal in life is still to write like MXTX because my dreams have done the full cyle of "I really want to write a story that I post on the internet like all of the cool people!" to "Maybe I'll write an Actual Book" to "I should probably just stick to writing reviews" and back all the way around to "I really want to write a story that I post on the internet like all of the cool people!"


• Eaten a food, took my meds, hydrated... And still decided that I couldn't wait a single minute more for a haircut, even though I was using nail scissors and no mirror.


• Realised that the haircut and the weepiness might be significant and took my emergency dose of anxiety meds.


• Did not pass the will save against ordering myself an ergonomic keyboard, did pass the will save against buying myself a keyboard with that lights up and has clacky buttons, because MAYBE people on my street don't want to hear me machine-gun typing at midnight. MAYBE.

So yeah, bit disappointed in the scifi ~~~~establishment~~~~, and I'm having a slightly off brain day, but I'm okay.

1. Get paper and a pen/a text doc.


2. Title it "WHY AM I STUCK ON [SPECIFIC THING]?"


3. Write down the answers until the page is full or I've realised what the actual problem is, because it's usually something very small and fixable.

It's basically rubber ducking on your own, but instead of explaining what you're trying to do you're going on a rant about how huge and scary this thing you're writing is and late you are submitting it and how FUCKING ANNOYING it is that you can't remember how to spell that one character's name – and then you go "Oh, wait, I can just put a post-it on my computer screen with the right spelling," and suddenly its easier, because the tiny thing was the grit in your shoe that made the rest of the walk unbearable. ... Or at least that's how it works for me.

Other ridiculous way to get unstuck is reminding myself that a review is BASICALLY three sentences. (Or three clauses, I guess, if you're like me and made entirely of run-on sentences.)

1. What this thing is!


2. What I think of this thing!


3. Why I think that!

Usually once I've got those three sentences done I either have my angle into writing more sentences, or I've gone "... Wow, I really have nothing to say about this book," which can be revealing enough on its own.I have no idea if these would work for people who aren't me, but this is what I've spent this morning doing!