Becca's Blog

Being a writer is fun and glamorous.

You stretch yourself to learn new things on a deadline, you try to be honest and fair, and you put yourself out there in public. In return, there's a universe of jerks out there, eager to take potshots at you. Fucking feh. I know that "comments from the peanut gallery," as my mother would term them, come with the territory. And I know I'm being overly sensitive and defensive. I almost never respond personally to criticism, because it's rather bad form: It usually devolves into a pointless pissing match and makes me look and feel small. But lord, I've been tempted lately. And this is my blog, and I'll bitch if I want to.

It's probably because I'm researching another difficult review that's going to require me to own up to not knowing everything in the world. I'm already bracing for another dose of  "You don't know everything, you even said so yourself! Well I do! Stupid, useless girl." Thanks for the feedback, man.

And then there's this retrograde crap, which got picked up by a Mac blog I read, and everyone seems to think it's not only hee-larious but reasonable and appropriate--and that all developers are men. What fucking decade (and century) is this?

Jesus H Gagmewithaspoon.

Geesh. 

Remind me?

Why did I say I wanted to edit for a living? Was it because I figured I could spend my days just reading? Well, that turned out to be partly true, but way back then I didn't really factor in that I would spend my days reading bad things. And that I would have to write to try to make the bad writing better. Further complicating my job is the fact that good writers are all alike; every bad writer is bad in their own way. I mean, really original. Sometimes I marvel at their ingenious badness.

OK, that's off my chest once again. Heavy sigh--I mean, deep breath--and back at it. With a machete.

And I thought my dogs were bad.

... for arrested development, that is. I have about six posts stacked up in my brain, with photos stored up in the camera, to boot--I've been trying not to goof off. But I just have to let fly with this one: I've been working with some authors for about four weeks now, and getting the materials they are supposed to provide has been a struggle. I am repeating my simple requests to them with increasing frequency and urgency as our mutual deadlines draw nearer.  Each time I repeat my simple request, I get some incremental bit of cooperation, but never completely what I need. I have to have faith that patiently repeating myself  will eventually yield the desired result, and I imagine that having a two-year-old must be like this.

Or am I really enacting that definition of insanity, where you keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result?