This has been a bad week.
No, scratch that. It’s been a bad month. Ever since we returned from Ireland, it seems that I’ve spent more time under the influence of my asthma than not. The perpetual heat wave we’ve been experiencing in my neck of the woods (temps over 100 for almost two weeks continually now, with no lowering in sight) and the accompanying air quality has certainly not helped. And I’ve heard tell that because of the extremely wet winter, the pollen counts in our area are skyrocketing, making my allergies act up, which causes my asthma to flare up. My best bet has been to stay at home with the air conditioner on (because the A/C also cleans up the air a bit in addition to cooling it down), and right next to my nebulizer and all my other meds. I’m able to work from home, fortunately, but I’m going a little stir crazy, not being able to go to the office. My doctor has said that since all the tests for anything unusual have come back negative, there really isn’t anything to do but grin and bear it and take my medications regularly as long as my peak flows aren’t in the red. There’s a new drug that we can try, but because it’s incredibly expensive ($15,000 per year), it’s not very likely that my insurance will cover it.
It’s all kind of bringing me down.
So this little ball of blues, encouraged by the persistent asthma, bubbled up from my psyche and started hunting around for something to focus on. I’m already feeling sorry for myself because of the asthma (I keep reminding myself that at least I have lungs), so the meandering ball of blues had to find something else to glom onto. Inevitably, it settled on my confidence as a writer and insinuated itself in there, a termite in the wooden structure of an imagination already overworked trying to make this analogy fit.
I feel like a wannabe. Not as much a wannabe as someone who says that they want to be a writer but has never actually generated any words, but a wannabe nonetheless. It does me no good to remind myself that I have five publication credits (three of them even for money). I haven’t sold anything this year (of course, I still have six active submissions at markets I haven’t heard from yet), so the doubt is unavoidable. And, honestly, it’s more about the quality of what I write; I look at the stories I already have published and go, “What the hell was that editor thinking?!!?” The Solitude of the Tentacled Space Monster feels like nonsensical dreck, “Ghouls” feels like a cheap Dashiel Hammet ripoff with Lovecraft pastiche thrown in for pretentiousness’s sake, and none of the other ideas I have feel workable to me.
Of course, I did submit a story to a new market I heard about today anyway. Objectively I know it’s a good story since it’s been picked up twice before, but the feelings haven’t diminished. I guess I feel like a fraud and a wannabe more than a real writer. A poseur. A fake. A phoney. Holden Caufield would sneer at me.
I’m pressing on anyway. When I’m done working today I’ll churn out a few words in both of my works in progress, because I know these feelings are transient and inaccurate, but still. You know how it is, don’t you?