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Rabia Gale

alchemical fantasy

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motivation

motivation

the paralysis of perfection

I admit it, I’m one of those moms who gets twitchy every time one of my kids colors outside the lines or decides that orange lettuce and purple tomatoes make an appetizing-looking salad. I was very uptight about the whole “place your sticker correctly in the space, properly aligned” and “follow directions to a T” business when the Firstborn was starting out on activity books, hovering to make sure he was doing it “right”. I’m pleased to note that my expectations of toddler and preschooler fine motor skills are far less unrealistic today than they were two years ago. While the Firstborn was made to color things yellow because darnit, that’s what the directions said to do, the Princess has the freedom to pick from a rainbow of choices. She is also free to pick markers over crayons, because really, markers are just plain more fun to color with.

The point of all this being that once upon a time my attitude was: if it can’t be done right, then it won’t be done at all.

Perfectionism is a beast I battle quite regularly in all areas of my life. It’s like a many-headed Hydra; if I chop one head off, it sprouts another as soon as my back is turned. Just this week I balked at actually starting any of the short stories spinning in my head on the pretext that they weren’t ready.

Well, the truth is that I wasn’t ready to write anything less than perfect.

Once I got to the root cause of my procrastination, I pulled out that trusty old Sword of Slaying and hacked off yet another head of the perfectionism beastie. Then I opened up Word and got a start on two of the stories.

Progress is miserably, painfully slow and I’m avoiding reading what little I’ve written, but at least it’s happening.

Oh, and today? The Firstborn got out a sticker book his grandfather gave him for his birthday and, aside from helping him find which stickers went with the pages he wanted to do, I did not watch him at all.

There’s hope for me yet.

do you NaNo?

National Novel Writing Month is almost upon us. This year November had the good sense to begin on a Saturday so all the eager novelists can get off to a flying start. I, unfortunately, will not be among them. I have a soft spot for NaNoWriMo, which gave me 50K-plus words on my first (and much loved) novel, The Changeling, in 2003. Since then, I have been too busy having babies, being pregnant, or dealing with the unpredictable sleeping patterns of newborns to take another stab at it. Next year…

Paperback Writer has compiled a great list of tips and links for NaNo-ers.

Who is participating in the novel-writing madness this year?

the secrets that we keep

I had a revelation last week while I was doing a bit of freewriting on why I write. Amidst the usual reasons of megalomania (“I am GOD of this world! Tremble, all ye minions! Bwahahaha!”) and delusions (“The voices in my head told me to write this”) of grandeur (“I will be rich and famous!”), I came up with this unexpected motivation:

I write to have something that is just mine, something I don’t have to share with the people I live with, to have a reason to carve out time and space for myself.

I’m not especially saintly and altruistic, but I do spend a lot of time doing things for other people. I kinda have to, seeing as I’m at home with three kids under the age of four. I feed and clothe and diaper; I sweep floors and wash dishes; I read books aloud and help with puzzles; I mediate disputes and drive my cherubs to playdates and doctor’s appointments. I don’t say this because I think I merit some kind of Mommy Prize–pretty much every mommy I know does this, and is happy to (except for maybe the dishes part). I say this because I am inherently a selfish person who needs a lot of down time for herself and mental and physical space to just think. Writing allows me a guilt-free way to get all that; after all, I’m not just flipping through a magazine or aimlessly surfing the Internet. I’m being productive, creative, inspired, thoughtful, disciplined, risk-taking, adventurous.

Oh, yeah, and getting that time to just myself.

I’m not sure whether this revelation changes anything. But it was a neat “huh, I never knew that about myself” moment.

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