Quiet on the set!

Since starting this project I have had to keep my inner editor quiet. It's hard to ignore whisperings of "This isn't very good" and "You used to be so much better at writing." I'm hoping that practice makes my writing better, because when I was writing all the time for a class at that met every two days I loved what I produced and there was evidence others did too.

I have a friend who is living one of my alternate universe lives. In an alternate universe, I go to graduate school and get an MFA (I had my eye on Bloomington, once a upon a time), get a job at a publishing house as an editor (I got one in a publishing house, but as the mail catalogue monkey), and work in my own home office, writing my own book and editing other people's books in between writing articles for magazines and whatnot. In some ways it's very strange to be good friends with a person who took the Other Path. She's even writing a previously-mentioned blog, one that actually has a theme and a point, not to mention marvelous writing, a post from which has been nominated for a "Best Post" award.

Although I haven't done much writing for years, there's a part of me that still thinks of myself as a writer. The way some people always think of themselves as fat no matter how much weight they've lost, my interior self-identity is still partly tied up in my writer persona. It's kind of embarrassing. It occurs to me now though that what makes it embarrassing is the editor, who always says, "No, you're not!" It's not like I'm telling anyone else I think I'm a writer, or used to be.

Maybe 360 days from now I'll feel more comfortable with it - writing, this blog, the editor, the quality of my work. I'll just keep writing on this project, one keystroke behind the other. Maybe I'll just be better, though I'm not sure how I will know because you know how those infernal, internal editors are.