warm up. melt down.

I'm trying to use this stupid blog to do something that NaNoWriMo has called "silencing your inner editor." I find that my own inner editor is a mouthy little fucker, even if I'm just writing random nonsense in a notebook or posting inane status updates to Face Book. I am my own worst critic in every sense of the term, and couple with my crippling self esteem issues, I cannot simply write a single paragraph without revising it a thousand times. Subsequently, I've decided to treat this blog as a "dear diary" type of thing. I might not necessarily have anything of significant import to say, but in the interest of channeling the spirit of Ezra Pound and simply letting it all hang out, I'm going to try to post something on here every day. I'm extremely undisciplined by nature (unless you consider tacos, cigarettes, and coffee a discipline) and my hatred of authority figures extends even to myself. If I tell myself to do something, I probably won't do it. I am allergic to rigidity. But the whole NaNo experience, maddening as it is, has been a good first step in simply paying slavish devotion to writing, even if it doesn't amount to anything. I'm firmly convinced that when this experience is over, I will lock the manuscript away in a lead lined box and not look at it for at least six months. But that's fine. If I can log 50k words in a month, that will be a big accomplishment for me, and I need that. The last three months have been a period of my life where I've seen more losses than gains, and I need something to help pull me out of this morass.

On an unrelated note, I applied for unemployment today, and it looks like I might get a tiny, tiny stipend. It's better than nothing, and at least I'll be able to eat.

The column I'm writing doesn't pay squat, but again, it's a good experience. Some day, perhaps, in the not too distant future, I'll have a big boy life.