Well, I finally did it – I wrote something in more than one sitting.

My NaNoWriMo novels of yesteryear don’t count. I wrote those a chapter at a time, and each chapter was written in one sitting, so I never had to pause something in the middle then come back to it later.

But I did for that silly little ghost story I wrote recently. I started it during the week qand finished it yesterday. And while I am a little worried that the tone is not consistent between the two parts, the important thing is that I finished the fucking thing, and without any egregious shortcuts either.

All my shortcuts were totally gregious, dude!

And I am pleased with myself for this. I feel like I have grown as a writer as a result of this rare act of multi-stage writing and that makes me feel very good. I feel like I can tackle larger things now.

Sadly, I am still not strong enough to be able to proofread and edit and polish my own workers. That is still a little bit too much like trying to perform surgery on myself in a moving vehicle for me.

I suppose the problem is that I either cannot or will not detach myself enough from what I have written to be able to view it cooly and objectively. Everything I write remains a part of me, psychologically speaking. And that makes it way too hard to treat it as something dead,. just so much text to be carved and polished and sold.

I get the feeling that if I actually was able to detach myself that much from what I have written, I would then become disgusted with it as the dead flesh that it is and the last thing I would want to do is spend time perfecting it.

I’d just want to put as much distance between the dead thing and myself as possible.

And that is, in essence, what actually happens. I never want to go back to the thing to make it presentable. That would be gross to me, weirdly enough. I want to move on to the next thing and do what I do best, which is create.

And that’s why I go on about needing someone else in the mix. A very patient and understanding editor, perhaps. Or an agent.

Of course, in order to get someone like that in my life, I would have to do something crazy, like go look, and that would take me outside my tiny anemic comfort zone, and so that is probably not going to happen.

It’s downright tragic how feeble a lifeform I am.

In fact, a lot of my problems in life have my problem with Other People at their route. I was going to bring that up in my Fru’s Sex Life column on Friday but I forgot.

The problem is that I can talk my good game all I want about all these things I should, could, or will do, but if those plans involve approaching someone I do not know and asking for something, the cripping dose of ice-cold terror that floods my soul from the pit of my stomach out kind of tells me it ain’t gonna happen.

I hate that fear. It keeps me down. Hold me back. Keeps me in my place. I could do so much more with my life if I could just get rid of it. It is the main thing that keeps me from doing anything with my life.

Well, that and being too weak to help myself most of the time.

I suppose that’s basically the same thing.

I could rock this world of ours if I only had the vitality and wherewithal to put myself out there and compete. But just the thought of it makes me crumble and cringe inside. I just fall apart like I am Icarus and I flew too close to the sun.

What I need is a deeper and stronger connection to my ever-lovin’ id. The only thing that I know of that can counter the douche chill effects of my weakness and fear is a strong inpuit from the heat and passion of the id.

But that complicates matters. My mind, by default, is structure against such a connection. It is built, instead, to maintain control and clarity of thought, and the chaotic nature of hot passionate emotions makes them anathema to such a state of mind.

Changing that is a tricky operation that (of course) takes a really long time.

And I am so goddamned sick of everything in my lfie being like that. I long for the capacity for transformation. Transcendence, even. SOme sort of mental mathematical function that lets the necessary rebalancings happen unimpeded and then leave me to pick up the pieces and adjust to the new normal.

The Flood, in other words.

But for good and for bad, I am built for long term stability. Like the Energizer bunny, I just keep going, and going, and going.

And to be honest, I don’t really have the kind of courage it would take to press that magic reset button. If I really wanted to, I could probably initiate that chain reaction in my mind if I really drilled down into my issues and found that part of my mind that would initiate the purging protocol.

It would be the psychological equivalent of a finger down the throat.

But I am far too terrified of the ensuing chaos to do it. It would feel like suicide. And it would BE suicide, in a way. But only in the sense that any large scale change in oneself is suicide in that it “kills” your current self as you understand it.

By default, our definition of self is “everything that I am right now”.  Accepting change therefore requires a more flexible sense of self that has faith that who we really are does not change and it is therefore “safe” to change the inessentials.

Faith has never been my strong suit. Even faith in things that are demonstrably true and perfectly in keeping with my high standards of logic and reason.

I don’t trust the universe enough to have faith in anything.

I have been hurt too much for that.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.