skzbrust, pameladean, 1crowdedhour, willshetterly, and klages. matociquala asked the panelists how she could find -- how one could find, really -- positive lies to overtake the negative ones. How to tell herself, "I can fix it on the next draft," or, "This will touch someone in a positive way," rather than, "Any skill or talent I may have acquired in the writing of previous works has since drained out my ears, leaving my skull an empty and rattling thing." Or like that. Um. Examples mine.And I wonder if the answer is that once you're doing it deliberately, once it's not your brain singing on autopilot, lies won't work, and you have to settle for the truth. I'm not sure, but it seems like that might be a grain of commonality in the responses some people had. Perhaps this is the tired speaking, and there are really all sorts of ways to deliberately cultivate belief in positive writers' lies instead of either stumbling upon them or settling for the truth.
I can has the tired, you see. Even after forty-five minutes of lie-down this afternoon after the sushi expedition, I am a Mrissish nubbin. I have been running on determination and joy since Thursday. It's good fuel, but one has to use the more traditional food and sleep at some point. This is apparently that point. And as much as I enjoyed the conversations at Fourth Street, and I definitely don't want to downplay that, for me personally one of the lovely parts of the whole weekend was watching people I like be warm and kind to people I love, and vice versa. It was not universal, of course; it never is. But the extent of it made me pretty happy. I bask.
Tomorrow I have a PT retest in the late afternoon, to see what kind of progress we're making with all this in an objective way. I have no idea what else will pop out regarding panels and other conversations before then. Possibly nothing. I think the proximity of the two is sort of a weird space, so...I'll do the best I can, which is all we can ever do.
