Whichever Way You Go Is Wrong

[WARNING - Generally Whiny Post Ahead]

Perhaps it's just in this family, but that seems to be the philosophy of every parent for every offspring. It starts to get irksome after a while... Back when the Universe was telling me in no uncertain terms not to get one job, that was the only job my mother would keep bringing up. Whatever else I applied for (and failed to get), I would never hear the end of whatever job I had previously applied for and failed to get.

Didn't hear back from Barnes & Noble? "You would've been so good at Medical Transcription."

Go in for an interview at the library? "Well, Barnes & Noble was hiring, weren't they? You'd be so good at that... but you really should go back to Medical Transcription."

Call on a job and get nowhere? "Are you sure the library's not hiring? And you'd do great at at a bookstore... and it's a shame you didn't try Medical Transcription."

So now, tomorrow, I'm going in for a job which sounds suspiciously like my previous job (nobody else wants it, so I'm 99% hired just by calling.) Mom was the one who actually pointed me towards it. So, what's the first thing out of her mouth when I tell her I'm going in tomorrow?

"I hear there's a new bookstore opening up next year in town. Maybe you could get hired there."

Call me crazy, but that's not exactly a vote of confidence. A new bookstore in town next year doesn't get me money before Xmas. A new bookstore in town next year doesn't get me in tomorrow. A new bookstore in town next year is just a new bookstore in town next year, and not what I need most right now: a source of immediate income. I suppose, in her own way, she thinks she's helping, but I really don't need to hear about a possible maybe potential future job when I need a definite here present-tense income-generating job.

Also on the speculative not-gonna-happen front, Mom is now pushing me to enter the unfinished monstrosity (a.k.a. The Story) in a local literary contest. Why? One of her coworkers is a member of a local literary group with all sorts of pro authors, so naturally Mom has spent quite a bit of time talking about how I want to be a writer. First off, this is rather ironic, as Mom spends so much time telling everyone and their brother how I'm the "writer" in the family, and yet she won't read a word of what I write. Secondly, if/when I do get this job, I must remember to purchase a new dictionary for the holidays, to see if the definition of "unfinished" has undergone a transformation in recent years. ("Monstrosity," I believe, is still the same.) Unfinished projects are not finished projects, and contests such as this want finished projects, as publication of some sort is often included in prizes. If I were within a chapter or two of the finish line, I might - Might, with a capital M and italics, just like that - consider it, but as it is I don't even think I'm at the halfway point and there's no end in sight. If I were to submit what I have - they only ask for 28 pages, including a synopsis and first chapter or two - and then, in the course of scrambling to finish, realize I made a major miscalculation and have to rework it, what does that tell these people about my reliability as a writer? I know it's a moot point, most likely, as the odds of me winning anything but a consolation bookmark in a writing contest are pretty remote, but after what happened in the last election remote odds seem to be making good these days. This goes hand in hand with the third problem, the problem that's slowed my story progress to a near-total standstill: I don't think I know how to finish a story. Yes, I did, more or less, finish it in the first draft. I have, more or less, written junk in the past that ended. And, yes, I've read about this sort of state in the many books on writing and creativity that I've read in lieu of actually writing or creating things over the years. It's a form of performance anxiety, essentially, coupled with general artistic insecurity and a flareup of my lazy perfectionism syndrome. It still makes for slow-to-nonexistent progress. Fourthly, of all the times of year to consider throwing myself into finishing a story come heck or high water, this really is the worst of them, even if I weren't jobhunting. And, fifthly, I can't seem to get any time to write even if I wasn't stuck on the third problem. (Why couldn't I have been a work-at-home Medical Transcriptionist even if everything else hadn't fought me? Gee, I don't know, I answer, as the family shouts a question through the closed door and the dogs start howling for no earthly reason...)

So, where does this leave me? Exactly where I was last month: sitting on an unfinished monstrosity, staring down the Dread Demon Reality with one eye while the other gazes off into a hazy, indistinct Future, a place with a thousand-odd paths awaiting me. And every one of them helpfully marked "Wrong Way."