Damn It Must Be Fun to Be a Con Artist
Aug. 17th, 2023 08:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingThis requires a bit of a lead-up, sorry.
I read a collection of short horror stories the other day. The collection was extensively praised, and the writer's work has been featured in all sorts of "best of" anthologies. I am generally predisposed to enjoy anything I read simply because I enjoy the act of reading, but these stories weren't great. They were tedious, unoriginal, and poorly written - no interesting characters, no interesting imagery, no genuine creepiness. Really, the stories were just words filling the page. I don't say this out of jealousy, because no one was more disappointed than me that the collection wasn't good.
But I couldn't help thinking, Is my writing really so much worse than this? Why am I having so much trouble getting published?
Anyway, I have ADHD. It usually isn't a problem during the summer, but I still have to visit a nurse practitioner every three or four months to keep my prescription of Adderall current in case I need it. I know what I'm about, so I generally don't talk to this person for more than ten minutes during our meetings.
But this time, after reading that mediocre short story collection, I thought I'd draw on the nurse practitioner's pool of contacts to see if I could inquire about a referral for someone like a life coach. I don't need therapy, but maybe I could benefit from working with someone who has more resources than I do and is able to see the wider picture. Specifically, I need to find a professional mentor, but I can't envision any way of doing so save to quit my job and enter an MFA program. Which I'm obviously not doing, because that's insane.
Still, I was wary about asking my drug dealer about a life coach. The concept of "life coach" makes me think about delusional 25-year-olds vibing with crystals on TikTok, but I thought, Whatever she says, how bad could it be?
It was bad:
https://carriespaulding.com/thirtysomething-panic-coaching/
I read a collection of short horror stories the other day. The collection was extensively praised, and the writer's work has been featured in all sorts of "best of" anthologies. I am generally predisposed to enjoy anything I read simply because I enjoy the act of reading, but these stories weren't great. They were tedious, unoriginal, and poorly written - no interesting characters, no interesting imagery, no genuine creepiness. Really, the stories were just words filling the page. I don't say this out of jealousy, because no one was more disappointed than me that the collection wasn't good.
But I couldn't help thinking, Is my writing really so much worse than this? Why am I having so much trouble getting published?
Anyway, I have ADHD. It usually isn't a problem during the summer, but I still have to visit a nurse practitioner every three or four months to keep my prescription of Adderall current in case I need it. I know what I'm about, so I generally don't talk to this person for more than ten minutes during our meetings.
But this time, after reading that mediocre short story collection, I thought I'd draw on the nurse practitioner's pool of contacts to see if I could inquire about a referral for someone like a life coach. I don't need therapy, but maybe I could benefit from working with someone who has more resources than I do and is able to see the wider picture. Specifically, I need to find a professional mentor, but I can't envision any way of doing so save to quit my job and enter an MFA program. Which I'm obviously not doing, because that's insane.
Still, I was wary about asking my drug dealer about a life coach. The concept of "life coach" makes me think about delusional 25-year-olds vibing with crystals on TikTok, but I thought, Whatever she says, how bad could it be?
It was bad:
https://carriespaulding.com/thirtysomething-panic-coaching/
