(no subject)

[kittydesade]

Place an order, using ～を　おねがいします. Use すみません to get your waiter's attention.

１．　コーラ/１　すみません。　コーラを　ひとつ　おねがいします。　
２．　サンドイッチ/２　すみません。　ふたつ　おねがいします。
３．　こうちゃ/１　すみません。　こうちゃを　ひとつ　おねがいします。
４．　ハンバーガー/３　すみません。　ハンバーガーを　みっつ　おねがいします。
５．　ラーメン/５　すみません。　ラーメンを　いつつ　おねがいします。
６．　Ａランチ/１　すみません。　Ａランチを　ひとつ　おねがいします。
７．　おさしみ/４　すみません。　おさしみを　よっつ　おねがいします。
８．　うどん/２　すみません。　うどんを　ふたつ　おねがいします。


Only a little bit of Japanese today. Like it seems everyone else at language practice, my brain has been shot out of a cannon.

I'm having one of those bouts of insecurity that comes with, well, being alive. Insecurity with a sticky thread of cranky anger. It's That Person again, the shorthand of whom is that many years ago now, a community moderator (and now editor of a magazine and author who has published a couple of books of short fiction) told me I simply wasn't a very good writer, and that the short story I'd submitted as a community application was crap. No real advice or substance, just that. This stuck, even though the community and most of the people in it have long since scattered to the winds, but I remember her and every so often I'll see her name about and it fills me with both a simmering discontent in her direction and the cowering fear that, yes, my writing is crap.

Compared to my writing now, no doubt what I wrote then is pretty bad. It suffers by being held up to several years of experience, as well it should. If I hadn't learned anything in the last few years, I'd be worried. But the insecurity remains, the feeling that she's become a published author and an editor, and I haven't. Does that mean she's better than me? Or simply luckier and better connected?

Hell if I know, but here are a few things that I do know. I know that writing is not a zero sum game, nor is publishing, despite all the quirks and hazards of the market. This means that her skill, great or small, does not diminish mine. I know that I have grown as a writer and that I continue to grow, because I can see and feel this in my work. I know that the publishing market is brutal, and that much of it depends on luck, the tastes of the readers, chasing the market while trying to stay ahead of it, and effort. And I know that I have not been putting in the effort to be published so much in the last few years, in favor of following through on my plan to self-publish a couple of novels and see how that goes, how I might market myself. I have no reason to be ashamed of my work, and neither she or I have given me cause to hold onto resentment, except for one comment several years ago. Letting go of that is still a work in progress.

To that end, though, I have my own work I am working on, crawling and struggling and crawling some more. I don't need to add bitterness to the load; my manic flailing and collecting projects will already make it hard. I have one novel to finish and two to edit, and a short (well, medium-length now) story to finish and edit. And various and sundry short fiction ideas, all of which are original, all of which I can play around in and submit, or not, to my heart's content. I can start up Barton Hall again, publishing that on its journal for people to read, or not, as they choose. There's a lot of things I can do. None of which involve dwelling. So, I think I'll go do some of them, and make myself feel better by making something nice.