So let's recap on some of my most recent stressors:
- Chaos falls over and bumps her tooth
- Grandma wouldn't shut up about how this would definitely lead to a lifetime of mouth abscesses
- The rising population of right-wing nutjobs who want to make a certain group of religious devotees illegal, thus playing into the hands of..
- The rising population of pseudo-religious devotee nutjobs who want to blow everyone else up
- My own mother sending me a "non-complimentary" beta-read instalment... and then insisting that I read it RIGHT NOW despite how useful it may actually be to the process of publishing the dang thing. Which lead directly to...
- Me sending her a "non-complimentary" email about how Beta-reading is a job that does not include the words, "rewrite the whole thing"
- The growing and profound certainty that nobody in the world cares about anything the way I care about it, and that 'anything' also includes myself. Which has lead to...
- The aforementioned email and me standing up for myself and the things I do for myself
If ANYONE tells me "I would not write it like that," or words to that effect, my immediate response is going to be, "Cool. You write it the way you like it and see how it does. You have ten months to write 120 000 words. Go!" And that includes my Mum, no matter how much I love her.
I wrote it like that because I wanted to. Not with your opinion in mind. That should be the end. Nobody else in the world has the inclination to tell a writer not to write how they want to write.
Like, what the hell. I don't write scathing letters to Stephen Moffat about how he should learn to be better at writing women and stop repeatedly killing the token black lesbian companion. I know better. I know he's going to throw that noise in the rubbish and continue being an arsehole to women in general and Bill in particular.
/rant
I need more genuine hugs in my life.
But I have had enough of people knocking me down, and I'm not leaving that bullshit alone any more. I'm calling that noise out every time it happens.