the pressure is getting to me

Not knowing.  Damn I hate not knowing.  I wait and I wait.  I try not to get disappointed as fewer than half the acceptances have come forward from Clarion West and none from East (though I suspect some calls have been made).  The uncertainty mixed with the hope mixed with the pressure…I can’t focus.

I put my daughter to bed last night and was too choked up to sing to her.  Part of it was the pressure of not knowing.  Part of it was the desire to actually leave her for six weeks.  Do I really want to do that?  Of course not, but I do want to attend a Clarion.  Unless I wait until she’s a teen and doesn’t want me around, I’m going to have to leave her for a while.  It sucks.  Thinking about it was hard.  Strangely, the feeling that it might not happen that way (if I am not accepted) made it even harder last night.

Knowing my wife doesn’t want me to go makes it even tougher.  She wants me to get the experience, but not leave.  Double-edged sword.  She doesn’t really understand my writing.  Her love is photography and she has made a small business out of it.  She knows I want to do that with writing but seems to doubt the reality of that idea.  Knowing how much she and I will have to sort out if I get accepted (who will help her with our two-year-old, where is all the money coming from, how will we keep in touch,…) makes the anticipation worse since the stress of that conversation will be for naught if I don’t get in.

I know my skills are at a point where Clarion (east or west) will push me onto the fast track to pro publication.  Did the stories I submitted represent enough of those skills?  Hard to say.  The folks at Baen’s Bar suggest my CW story had very stilted dialog and a pretty harsh deux ex machina.  Not promising.  I never saw my dialog as stilted (forcing background information the characters wouldn’t really be talking about into their dialog) as much as it was conveniently sarcastic.  *sigh*  No point in fretting over things now.  I work well under pressure, but there’s no pressure here, just anticipation.  All I can do is wait and second-guess myself.  Bad.

My work on the Kree story has ground to a halt.  Anticipation has given me writer’s block.  NO!  I know an acceptance will unblock me.  Will a pair of rejections?  It will clear the anticipation but not likely help my confidence.  Maybe I just need to power through it, finish the story in all narrative summary if I must, just get the idea down.  Maybe I need to take up smoking.

That’s all for now as I suffer through the last few days of waiting.  I keep praying that God’s will be done in this, not my own.  That doesn’t help my waiting but may help how I deal later on.

-Oso