Not Yet

When I take my toddler to the doctor, I have to fill out pages of questionnaires about his development.  Can he stack four blocks?  Does he point at things?  Can he walk backward?  The cool thing about this is that I can say, "Heck yes!  He walks backward like a champ!"  But the other cool part is that the options for answers are "Yes," "Sometimes," and "Not yet."

"Not yet" is nice.

Is he using a spoon?  Well, not exactly.  We're working on it.  He'll get it.

I got Modern Monsters edited last week to the point where I was ready to send it to readers.  This was a big accomplishment for me, but rather than basking in my greatness, I sat down to send a few of them off to a critique group.  So I went through them and thought, "Which are the five worst ones?" and then made a list of all the stories and all the things I didn't like about them so I could compare their problems and make a decision about which ones to send.  I discovered that they were all terrible and I was a terrible writer and a terrible person.

This discovery rained on my celebratory parade.

I need to change the way I think about it--for my writing and for my life in general.  It's not "Which are the worst?" but it's "Which ones need attention?"  It's not "No" or "Bad" or "Oh God, everything's awful."  It's "Not yet."  It's "I'm working on it."  It's "It'll get there."  Not just the way I talk about it, but the way I think about it needs adjustment.