I dreamed I was driving on a 4-lane divided highway in a rural setting, but in fairly heavy traffic, and up ahead a steady stream of cars was crossing the highway: they'd come to a stop at the edge of the 2 lanes going my way, wait for an opening and then cross slowly, coming close enough to the speeding highway traffic to alarm me. The closer I got the more alarmed I became. Now that I'm awake I wonder why I didn't just pull over onto the shoulder and approach the intersection slowly, but in the dream that never occurred to me. I just kept speeding closer and closer to danger. I don't remember crossing the intersection.
Then I was in a very swanky party or reception full of people in tuxedos and ball gowns. I was nervous about the possibility that I was underdressed. For some reason I was unable to perceive what I was wearing. I thought I might be in a perfectly presentable tuxedo, or in carpenter's work clothes, or something somewhere in between.. A leggy-supermodel-looking woman was standing a few steps away with her back to me, wearing a very short dress which showed a lot of her beautiful back. Her hair was up in ancient-Greek-style braids. She turned around, and for a moment as a light shown very brightly into her face, not allowing me to see much more than her eyes and her lips, I thought she was Christy Turlington or a young Chisty Turlington lookalike. Then she turned her face and I saw it from the side and I saw that she had a truly enormous nose. Aquliline and about as big as any human nose I have ever seen. We got to talking. It turned out that she was an in-demand fashion model. This didn't surprise me. She was very beautiful. The unusual nose didn't prevent her from being very beautiful. She was very insecure about her looks. This also didn't surprise me: it seems that many fashion models, paradoxically, are very insecure about their looks. She was convinced that her nose made her ugly and talked about people hiring her for her "freak" value. I tried to convince her that I found her very beautiful. She mentioned that she'd been giving serious thought to having a nose job. I pleaded with her not to. I thought of mentioning that I had gone through periods of insecurity in my life because of my complexion, but decided not to say anything about that for fear that it might just make her insecurity worse -- if, for example, she didn't happen to find me physically beautiful. Her complexion was just gorgeous, peaches and cream.
She seemed to like me more and more, whatever she happened to think of my looks. Considering we'd just met, I was being unusually frank and effusive about how beautiful I found her, and as I woke up she seemed to be starting to really believe it, and to believe that it wasn't a case of my being into freaks, that she really was beautiful.
Showing posts with label self image. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self image. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Saturday, July 27, 2013
My Opinion Of Myself And Some Others. An Advertisement For Myself
I feel pretty good about what I write. I think I'm a good writer.
And suddenly today that started to worry me, when I contrasted it with remarks about writing by two of my favorite writers. One is by Kurt Vonnegut,
from the preface to one of his books. I don't remember it word-for-word but it went something like this: "How do I feel about this book? I feel lousy about it. I feel lousy about all my books." Seemed he felt somewhat embarrassed that he hadn't be able to do better. The other remark is by Samuel Beckett
and is more concise: "To write is to fail."
That's what two writers whom I find to be excellent -- Beckett especially -- have to say for themselves. Pretty close to outright apologizing for doing what they did. What I'm worried about is that perhaps they were so good in significant part because they were profoundly dissatisfied with themselves, and therefore constantly striving mightily to do better, and that, conversely, my satisfaction with my own work keeps it relatively mediocre. But you know what? I still think I'm pretty good. And people whose opinions I value highly also have praised my work.
I wouldn't say that it's a widespread opinion that I'm a good writer, because I don't think enough people know anything at all about me for any opinion about me to legitimately be called widespread. I'm not good at marketing my work. I'm more sure about this negative opinion of my marketing skills than about my positive opinion of my writing, because marketing skills can be measured objectively, in terms of numbers, and the quality of writing cannot. I won't tell you how few clicks this blog gets, because 1) I don't want you to cry or feel sorry for me, and 2) it's basically nunya bidniss nohow. But I need an agent. I had an agent once, a good one, but I lost him again, because I never finished the novel which got him interested in working for me, and by the time I finished another novel he had moved on to another profession. I got that agent by the sheerest and dumbest of sheer dumb luck, and unfortunately for me, finding an agent, a skilled person to market one's work, is itself a kind of marketing. (*sigh*)
And because I am not (yet) so hugely successful that counting my money and turning down business offers occupies all of my free time, and also because I am a bit of a schmuck, let's face it, I spend some time commenting on articles on Huffingtom Post, where they keep us schmucks coming back and clicking on their site and making them money with dumb things including badges, yes badges, and what inspired me to write this post was that today I noticed that ________* had received the Community Pundit badge, which comes with the perk that some of yr comments are conspicuously placed above the others immediately below the text of an article. I'm pretty sure that the Pundits don't actually get PAID or anything, still it irks me mightily than an absolute dolt and moron like ________ has been named a Pundit, whilst I have not.
Then again, do I really want to be in a club which would have ________ as a member? And how are Pundits really chosen? HP says:
"HuffPost Pundits are our most engaged and thought-provoking commenters. Pundit Badges are awarded based on a strong history of insightful comments,"
which sounds as if HP would have us believe that some actual human beings working (as unpaid interns?) for HP found ________ to be insightful and thought-provoking. Can that really be? If that's true it would be quite discouraging, for it would mean that some real bozos are driving the bus over there. Or are Pundit badges actually awarded like the other badges: by a machine which counts clicks, counts things like fans and friends and faves? That too would be discouraging, but in a different way: it would be yet another indication that HP comments section is just another internet flame war trying to pass itself off as a moderated "community."
In any case, sad for me that my life's empty enough that I care. May that change soon, completely and forever. From your lips, gentle readers -- from both of you -- to Andrew Wylie's ears.
*I considered writing ________'s handle in this post, but why do that?
And suddenly today that started to worry me, when I contrasted it with remarks about writing by two of my favorite writers. One is by Kurt Vonnegut,
from the preface to one of his books. I don't remember it word-for-word but it went something like this: "How do I feel about this book? I feel lousy about it. I feel lousy about all my books." Seemed he felt somewhat embarrassed that he hadn't be able to do better. The other remark is by Samuel Beckettand is more concise: "To write is to fail."That's what two writers whom I find to be excellent -- Beckett especially -- have to say for themselves. Pretty close to outright apologizing for doing what they did. What I'm worried about is that perhaps they were so good in significant part because they were profoundly dissatisfied with themselves, and therefore constantly striving mightily to do better, and that, conversely, my satisfaction with my own work keeps it relatively mediocre. But you know what? I still think I'm pretty good. And people whose opinions I value highly also have praised my work.
I wouldn't say that it's a widespread opinion that I'm a good writer, because I don't think enough people know anything at all about me for any opinion about me to legitimately be called widespread. I'm not good at marketing my work. I'm more sure about this negative opinion of my marketing skills than about my positive opinion of my writing, because marketing skills can be measured objectively, in terms of numbers, and the quality of writing cannot. I won't tell you how few clicks this blog gets, because 1) I don't want you to cry or feel sorry for me, and 2) it's basically nunya bidniss nohow. But I need an agent. I had an agent once, a good one, but I lost him again, because I never finished the novel which got him interested in working for me, and by the time I finished another novel he had moved on to another profession. I got that agent by the sheerest and dumbest of sheer dumb luck, and unfortunately for me, finding an agent, a skilled person to market one's work, is itself a kind of marketing. (*sigh*)
And because I am not (yet) so hugely successful that counting my money and turning down business offers occupies all of my free time, and also because I am a bit of a schmuck, let's face it, I spend some time commenting on articles on Huffingtom Post, where they keep us schmucks coming back and clicking on their site and making them money with dumb things including badges, yes badges, and what inspired me to write this post was that today I noticed that ________* had received the Community Pundit badge, which comes with the perk that some of yr comments are conspicuously placed above the others immediately below the text of an article. I'm pretty sure that the Pundits don't actually get PAID or anything, still it irks me mightily than an absolute dolt and moron like ________ has been named a Pundit, whilst I have not.
Then again, do I really want to be in a club which would have ________ as a member? And how are Pundits really chosen? HP says:
"HuffPost Pundits are our most engaged and thought-provoking commenters. Pundit Badges are awarded based on a strong history of insightful comments,"
which sounds as if HP would have us believe that some actual human beings working (as unpaid interns?) for HP found ________ to be insightful and thought-provoking. Can that really be? If that's true it would be quite discouraging, for it would mean that some real bozos are driving the bus over there. Or are Pundit badges actually awarded like the other badges: by a machine which counts clicks, counts things like fans and friends and faves? That too would be discouraging, but in a different way: it would be yet another indication that HP comments section is just another internet flame war trying to pass itself off as a moderated "community."
In any case, sad for me that my life's empty enough that I care. May that change soon, completely and forever. From your lips, gentle readers -- from both of you -- to Andrew Wylie's ears.
*I considered writing ________'s handle in this post, but why do that?
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