Writing Against the Odds

I dreamed last night that I was competing in a beauty contest I couldn't possibly win.  Before you try to psychoanalyze such a symbol-potent dream as that one, I'll spare you some trouble.  I really did enter in a beauty pageant I couldn't win.

Miss Nude Tennessee.  A couple weeks ago.  And let me tell you something, I totally lost.  And, be it a good thing or a bad one, after the contest, when many of the other girls were wailing about how unfair the judges were, I was congratulating the girls who won.  Because they deserved to win.  They were beautiful.  They gave excellent performances.  They worked hard.

And so did I.  It just wasn't what the judges were looking for.  They were looking for a girl who looked like the quintessential Tennessee stripper.  They were not looking for someone who looks a little bit too much like a novelist that dons stripper shoes after dark to battle the dark forces of her own expanding waistline.

So, the dream might've been a very realistic replay of events that have already happened, or it might represent something that's been on my mind a little more.  The other contest I feel like I don't have a hope of winning.

Let's call this the Indie Writer Contest and it involves seeing some measure of success as a novelist at some point in the foreseeable future.  Honestly, I'd almost rather be going up onstage to compete against girls I know have already got me beat.

I have a very long-held, and probably irrational belief, that some people were born to be winners.  Some people were born to be the very best at something.  Some people have the talent, the determination, the connections and the sheer good luck to climb to the top.

And I am not one of those people.  I never have been.

If life has taught me anything, with all my repeated scraps and bumps, with falling down and getting up again and again, it's that I was not born to carry the first prize.  I should not-- and do not-- toil to become the very best there ever was.  Because I never will be.  I was never meant to be.

And yet, here I am, working my ass off.  Day after day, writing novels, trying to find new social media to sell my work through, ordering business cards with clever quips on them.  I try anything I can think of.  Somewhere down the road something has to work.  I keep telling myself that.  Even though reality functions more like this: somewhere down the road something might work.

So why try?  Why enter into a contest that I can't win?  Why try to be something so few people can successfully be?

Because I may never have been destined for first place, but that doesn't mean I have to be a loser.  Too many people assume that, if you aren't on top, you must be crawling in the dirt.  It doesn't work like that.  There's always a second prize, a third place, a fourth, a fifth.

There's always that one sorry rung above the losing place.  I've clung to that rung so many times, working desperately not to drop off and sink to the bottom.  (And sometimes I've still fallen, despite my best efforts.)

If I become the best pole dancer I can be, even though I'm not the best there is, I'm still pretty damn impressive.  If I become the best novelist I can be, I probably still won't gain any recognition for my work, but at least I'll produce a good story or two.  If I become all the many things I want to become, I will never be the best at any of them, but the combination of my skills will make me a unique and many-talented individual.

If I reach my old age, and I can look back and say that my life was not boring, I will consider it a success.

That's the prize I work for, the prize I'm quite certain I can win.  And, of all the prizes out there, isn't that one of the most rewarding?

So I finally published that novel...

Came back here with the intention of deleting that last post.  I guess it really wasn't too bitchy, but it felt bitchy.  I was in a bad mood when I wrote it, and the words felt moody in my head.  Feel free to ignore that last post.  There's some very good advice in it, but it's rather bitter advice, and I try to tell myself I'm more optimistic than that.

Anyway, another thing.

I finally published my novel.  Here's a link.  I doubt anyone comes to this blog, but I'll leave it anyway.  The novel is called There were Spirits in the Stone and it's a post-apocalyptic sci-fi.  If that's your kind of read, then follow the link to get a better description and some free sample chapters.  If you enjoy the sample chapters, the rest of the book is only $1.99 which is pretty affordable.

It's a first novel, so publishing it has been sort strange.  Not really emotional so much as just strange.  I was telling my fiance earlier tonight.  I can't sit down and read my novel, because every time I look at it, I hear a different voice reading it to me.  Normally when I read a novel, I envision the author's voice reading it to me. Every author writes to his or her own specific cadence, therefore, I can hear every author's voice as a unique voice.  My own writing doesn't sound like anyone's voice.  It sounds... weird in my head.

So, I've put the book away.  I don't know if it's a good book or a bad book.  I'm really hoping someone will give me some feedback, because I think it'll be quite a while before I'll be able to just open it up and start reading it like a normal book.  And I've already started on the next book.  This first one was actually a prequel for a series.  Don't worry, the series will be better written than the first book.  I hope.

In other news, I've drawn up plans for several different imaginary houses.  There's the concrete one, which is definitely my dream house.  There's also a few different ideas regarding what to do with the trailer, since we've got it and I might as well no waste it.

It might turn out to be good to have, because building a wooden house will be very difficult in the woods in the middle of nowhere without access to tools or electricity.  If I realize I need a special kind of screw out on our land (middle of nowhere), it'll take me four hours to drive out, buy it, and drive back.  But if I do it on the trailer on a property near a home depot, my chances of getting it successfully finished are higher.

I'm still not gonna take help from anyone in making it.  I'm really not trying to sound bitter with this, but I'm not taking help making this unless its from my fiance.  It's no one's fault, it's just that people have schedules and they get busy and things don't get done.  And it's more than that.  I want the learning experience of turning the trailer into a tiny house on wheels, because if I understand how to do that, I can then move on to bigger projects (like the concrete dream house).

So... now all I need is money.  Since I'm going to be making this with the cheapest material I can find, I should be able to make it with about $2000.

I'm gonna have to sell a lot of books...

Moving Prep, Death and Taxes

Well, it's Thursday, and about a month before my end-of-stripping due date.  I'm so broke.

So, to take stock of this week.  I tore apart the closet and put the vast majority of my clothes in storage, leaving out a few that I plan to take to the gypsy wagon.

I started writing a new book yesterday.  More of a pamphlet, really.  Anyway, I plan to publish it as an ebook and use it as an experimental how-to-sell-books-online kind of book.  It shouldn't take much time to write.

Yesterday, still frustrated in my never-ending quest for the perfect purse, I broke down and sewed one.  I'm still getting used to it (every purse has a breaking in period) but so far I like it well enough.  I think I should have sewn some cardboard into the lining to make it a little firmer, but as it is it's nice enough.

The living room is full of boxes.  And I need to work tonight because it's the first and the rent is due.  It will be the last time I have to pay rent, though, so that's exciting.

Less exciting is the fact that I still have to pay last years taxes and the taxes from the year before that.  And I need to find a new tax preparer because the lady who did mine last year charged me over $500 to do my taxes.  That's almost half as much as I owed in taxes to begin with.  So, yeah.  I'm pretty sure I got ripped off that time.

It's amazing how many people will try to rip me off once they find out what I do for a living.  I'm pretty sure this year I won't say.  I'll just tell whoever's doing my taxes that I'm self-employed and I have zero business expenses and my only deduction is the 500 freaking dollars I spent having my taxes done last year.

I'm tired of being broke.  I'm really, really tired of taxes.  It wasn't such a huge deal when I was employed like everybody else.  You take the form.  You fill out the form.  You do a little math.  You're done.  Now, I'm technically self-employed and there are so many freaking pieces of paper I'm supposed to be accountable for.

I feel very helpless at tax time.  There's more information than I know how to compute so I'm at the mercy of someone else to put it all together for me.  Then I have to pay out lots of money that I don't have on hand because I only ever seem to earn enough to live off of.  And then, if for whatever reasons the government decides there was something wrong with all the math and paperwork which I had hardly any control over to begin with, they'll send me threatening letters and harass me to give them yet more money.

Furthermore, no one seems to understand this conundrum because they only have to fill out W2s.  So every year everyone else is asking me why I never get money back, and I'm always explaining to them that my taxes are very different.  Instead of getting money back, I'm expected to somehow raise several hundred dollars which I then give directly to the government.  And that number changes from year to year.  One year it was $4,000.  Another it was only $800.  Everyone says there must have been a paperwork error on the $4,000, but is the IRS ever going to give me that money back?  Sure as hell they're not.

More likely than not, they'll notice that discrepancy someday and assume that I'm just lying about how much money I earn, and rain hell down on me while I huddle in my little trailer and wonder where the heck I'm supposed to get yet more money to give the government.

So there.  That's my rant on taxes.  I'd be so freaking happy if they just simplified it all down.  You earn X which means you pay Z% of X.  So much better than getting calls from my freaking accountant.  "Now are you sure you didn't use your phone at all to contact your customers or place of business, because we could deduct that for you."  For the billionth time, no!  Don't you people charge by the hour?  Stop asking me this.

Introspection

The last time I was at work, several of my customers advised me not to be honest on my resume for whatever future job I might pursue.  "If you tell someone what you've done (exotic dancing), they're going to want to fuck with you."  "So?" "Maybe I should be clearer.  They're going to want to fuck you.  If I didn't know you, I wouldn't hire you.  No one in corporate America would want to hire you."

As usual, my customers have the sweetest way of lending me their vote of confidence.  While I'm not necessarily inclined to believe them until I've tried and failed to get a traditional job myself, there's a part of me that's relieved.

I don't know how well I'd fare in a traditional job anymore.  I'm far too accustomed to being my own boss.  Maybe this will become my excuse not to waste times pursuing the traditional job-seeking model.

I don't know what to do next, though.  It's been suggested to me, and I have to agree, that our generation seems to be saturated with this sense of entitlement, regardless of our lot in life.  We've all been raised to believe we're secretly meant to be the superstar.  No one remembers that we all need someone to flip our hamburgers.  I haven't decided which of those two categories I'm ultimately destined for.  (Most likely I'll end up somewhere in between.)

But is my insistence on finding a job that suits me a symptom of the entitled attitude of my generation or is it my own perfectionistic tendency to demand that I'm always climbing to newer levels of acheivement?

Honestly, I have a cold, my nose is stuffy, and I don't care anymore.

I've spent the last couple days going over my novel.  Again.  It's beautiful.  But is it perfect?  Nothing's perfect.  And this will never be perfect enough for me.

I just keep running through it looking for flaws.  Again and again.  How am I ever going to publish this thing if I don't stop editting?

I'll finish this draft tonight.  After that, I'll have to give it to someone to read.  Probably my fiance.  And while he's reading it, I'm going to run to work so I don't have to pace around the apartment feeling uncomfortable while someone reads my less than absolutely perfect novel.

Coping with Stress

I was going to work today.  I got all ready, assembled my stripper gear, hyper-groomed everywhere, double-checked everything, kissed my fiance, walked to the door--

And then I stopped and put my gear away, slipped into a pair of pajamas and sat back down on the couch where we hang out.  I know if I'd gone, I would have made money.  My heart just wasn't in it today.  My fiance was sitting on the couch, and he looked like the embodiment of all coziness.  I wanted nothing more than to sit on the couch with him and savor his company.  So I did.

I've been stressed out all week.  It seems to have taken forever for me to catch on to the fact.  Stress seems to work differently on every individual, and on me it's virtually invisible.  I can be stressed to hell and back, and I might be completely oblivious to it.  And nearly everyone else around me will be oblivious to it, too.  It's not like stress manifests outwardly me, either.

That doesn't sound so bad, except that just because a problem's invisible doesn't mean it isn't there.  A perfect example is my novel.  I've got it all finished-- rough draft, first tuning draft-- all except for one chapter.  One chapter.  And for some reason, I can't seem to finish that chapter.  The stress is so overwhelming I just shut down completely the moment I open the program to begin working on it.  It's one crumby chapter in the center of the novel.  I could probably delete those four silly pages, and no one would notice them missing from the story!

How do I know it's stress that's stopping me from finishing the novel?  Well, I've had it done for half a year now.  I've been sitting on the damn thing for half a year, and meditating, and soul-searching, and trying to figure out what the big deal is that's stopping me from completing it.  So far, the best I've figured out with all that introspection is that the cause of my problem is stress-related.  (Way to go Sherlock.)

So, earlier today I figured out that I'm under stress.  That's great.  Now I just have to figure out what's causing the stress.  And if the stress was invisible, the stressor is doubly so.

So what am I stressed about?  My lack of money?  My search for a new job?  My fear that I'll hate the job I take?  My nagging perfectionistic tendencies toward self-criticism centering on my questionable work ethic and lack of life achievements?

Perfectionism: no matter how much awesome shit you do, you always wish you were more awesome.

Or maybe it's social anxiety-- you know, the social anxiety I pretend doesn't exist because my perfectionistic side insists that I can get through this busy, crowded world like any normal person even if I have a heart attack in the process.

LOL.  In fact, I've got to say that for all my dysfunctions, I've stitched together a relatively functional psyche for myself.  It's one of the things I'm proud of.  Life's worn me down a fair bit.  I'm a creature haunted by irrational fears and nagging phobias.  And yet, I work every day to conquer them.  Every day, I force myself to learn and experience new things-- despite my timidity-- because I refuse to let my fears limit me.

It's a challenge, and I challenge any human I meet to do the same.  Life's to short to lose to irrational anxieties.  (Rational anxieties, however, are another matter entirely, which is how I justify my never-ending fear of spiders.  Sometimes, they're poisonous.)

And at the same time, whatever's stressing me out this week is showing up from the inside out, so going out and facing the world probably isn't going to fix all that much.  Taking a quiet evening to spend with my beloved, cuddling the kitty-cat who's decided to use my shoulder as a pillow right now, meditating, writing out my thoughts-- now that I think will help me.

Perhaps the reason I'm stressed out right now, I that I feel a lack of control over my situation.  I've set a due date to quit stripping.  That's a thing many other girls can't make themselves do.  The problem is, that I don't know what I'll do after that.  I've been exploring my options.  I'd love to grow food to sell at a farmer's market, but I don't know how lucrative that would be.  It would have the double impact of eliminating our food bills as well as providing a little extra cash.  But... would it work?  Would I need another job on top of that to be satisfied.

Ultimately, it seems that I'm still my harshest critic.  In my never-ending race to measure up and pull my own weight, I always seem to overwhelm myself with three times the amount of weight I need to haul.

So, tonight, despite the fact that I absolutely Must earn money this week, I'm taking today off.  My heart's not in it, and it's not quite worth it to go.  I'll enjoy a quiet coffee (a non-diet food, but oh how I crave the gentle bitterness of it) and I'll enjoy the companionship of my best friend in the whole world.  And I'll find internal balance again, because it's selfish, but I think sometimes it's worth it.