11_Distinctions

Let me be clear.  I will not use this blog as a journal so that I can spill out my anxieties and fears and angstyness.  Although, being a writer, it's bound to come out at some point.  But I do need to be clear about some things:  the fact that I'm enmeshed in a life-long battle with depression (and some anxiety, to make it interesting) is no secret.  I will not go on in too much detail about this because, quite frankly, the nature of what depression really is and how it affects people has been fairly exhaustively covered by the rest of the Interwebs.

I will say one thing which I think is fairly relevant:  if you want to do mental health a disservice and boil depression down into only two types, you would have on one hand the more situational based depression.  "I am sad because my puppy died while he was driving his little puppy car drunk."  On the other hand, you'd have the deeper, chemical depression where there's nothing you can do about it but wait it out.  It's a matter of your brain chemistry being out of sync. It's not brought on by anything, it just happens.  That's where I am right now.

Which is why I'm determined to start seeing my weekly goals through and to take those baby steps towards leading a life more suitably geared towards staving off emotional pitfalls.  And while it is usually good for your writing to have your characters teetering on the brink of one emotional pitfall or another, it's not fun being there in actual Real Life.  It certainly doesn't make it easy when Well Intentioned Nasty Editor tells you with as much patience and affection as is possible that everything you absolutely love about the story you've just shown her doesn't work.

Which leads me to another distinction I would like to make.  Faulkner, aside being famous for being a terrific writer, was also famous for the much-quoted saying "kill your darlings."  Meaning, don't be afraid to get rid of an element of a story simply because you think it's really neat.  I would like to amend that a tiny bit.  Don't kill your darlings, keep them on cryostasis.  Your darling may not be right for that specific story, but you never know when it will be needed.

GRAD SCHOOL WATCH:  Looking up programs.  The least fun part of it, I think.  Once I move in to Bro's house in two weeks I'll have a nifty chalk-board wall in my room on which to draw really cool charts detailing my progress and deadlines and...aliens?  Sure.  Fun.  But until then, it's the tedious process of narrowing down this Vast Country's offerings of further education to twelve or fifteen programs that might take me.

- Kid