Does "not as bad" qualify as "okay"?

[partly]

I want to thank everyone who responded to my last post. I would comment directly but after I click on "reply" I just stare at the empty box until I hit the back button on the browser.

My writer's group is tomorrow and... I don't want to go. I've obsessedthought and obsessedthought and obsessedthought about it and I can't get past the odd feeling of being ticked off and being completely sure that they were right. And I still don't know how much of it is me and how much is my writing.

I know that I'm worrying some of you out there. I don't mean too and I totally realize that I should be sleeping instead of writing a post. Tiredness does not make Partly a perky person. I won't get so deep into navel gazing tonight. As my mother said: All you see when you navel-gaze is lint.

I think it would be a bad idea to skip the group, though. I'm not being critiqued this time, so it will be better, if only because no one will be talking about me. Heh. And I really do like P's writing and I adore her stories. Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm not fond of "mainstream novels" but I like what P writes.

And I'm a runner at heart. The whole "avoidance" option is always the most appealing to me. I could just walk away and never speak to any of them (or of any of them) with very little problem. Avoidance isn't healthy, though. I would always wonder how much of it was real and how much was my paranoid little mind twisting things. If I don't go tomorrow, I will never go back. I'll just not show up.

And that's just.... wrong. No matter how much I don't want to go or how much I want to avoid it, not going is a kind of defeat. Now I'm not saying that the group wants to drive me out or anything, I don't think it's that personal (at least I hope not -- I don't want to be part of anything that petty). I can't run from this because it's nothing I should run from. At least not until I'm sure that there is nothing left there for me.

As I tell Myr: "Stuff your courage deep into a pocket so it stays with you and just do it".

Eh. It sounds better when I say it to her. I shouldn't be second-guessing myself about this. A lot of the critique last week was heavy handed. When this bit of dialog -- "Do you put down all your horses because one of the herd is sick? Do you burn the entire settlement when one of its members has committed a crime?" Jamiline stood and crossed back to the window. "No. You cull out the sickness and punish only the guilty." -- sparks a five minute discussion about how you sometimes do have to put down the entire herd and therefore the argument is false, I have to think that the problem wasn't all in the writing. This was shortly after the five minute discussion on how the line Adding one more layer of bureaucracy had little effect on their everyday life. was blatantly wrong because one more layer of bureaucracy would cost more money and therefore would be horribly crippling.

The problem is that both of those arguments could be made but simply because a statement can be turned on it's ear doesn't make it wrong.

I think my biggest problem is that I haven't decided on how to deal with this. The only good thing is that I won't have to. Tomorrow is all about P's piece and I get a couple more weeks to obsessthink about it.

And just so you know I appreciate you all for reading this – Thanks for noticing.

Comments

[amilyn.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Thinking of you.

[kitap.livejournal.com]

You know, if they are focussing on whether something you say is correct, or whether there are times when the saying is false, I think this means that they do not know how to handle your fic. In fact, I would say that they are uncomfortable with it; they want nice Jane Austen-fic or romances.