Word spotlight: Deserve

A day late for blog, but not a dollar short, because there’s more to heaven and earth than monetary value, etc.

Now that I’ve successfully butchered at least two well-known phrases, I might actually shift blogging to Fridays, since end-of-week musing seems to be working slightly better than semi-midweek marketing work. And if I’m diligent, there’s a good chance I’ll have cleared out my other tasks before I ever hit the last day of the working week, ensuring I’ll have the mental bandwidth for it. I spent most of yesterday sure there was something I was forgetting, and sure enough …

I’ll live, with a minimum of self-punishment. Some standards aren’t meant to be borne.

Which actually brings me to my musing for today. It is, perhaps, not totally related to writing, save that it arose from a conversation about writing; but since it’s a topic about a specific word, I think it counts. After all, words are a writer’s tools, and it’s always good to know when and how and why they’re used.

Today’s word is ‘deserve’.

I was talking to a writer friend who was having some trouble writing to her word-count standards, and she said something to the effect of ‘I don’t deserve to have fun unless I’ve done this’.

This friend is well aware that her brain weasels lurk in the ‘not good enough’ stratum, so the remark was an acknowledgement of feeling rather than true belief, but I was struck by the use of the word ‘deserve’. Which, to be fair, I usually am. Because I dislike the word. A lot. Yes, even when it’s used to give one’s self something positive.

Because the word ‘deserve’ is a judgment call. By its nature, it applies a moral imperative not just to the context at hand, but the subject (frequently, a person). It’s one of those words where using it positively is still buying into a negative concept: that everything we do, and are, ought to be judged.

We know what happens when we fall short. That’s the source of the ‘I don’t deserve to have fun unless …’ statements. But what’s on the end of that ‘unless’? What standard is being met? Is it a fair one for that person’s given circumstances, or not? And, conversely, how many times have we heard ‘I deserve this’ used bitterly, to demand something a person does not have and did not receive, and thus create entitlement?

The only halfway appropriate measure I’ve seen ‘deserve’ used is in the context of people trying to overcome chronic self-esteem issues by declaring themselves someone of worth. And I think that’s a fair use, especially if someone isn’t equipped to contemplate anything more complicated. Even then, I wonder at the necessity of that word in particular.

At its heart, ‘deserve’ is a justification tool. But most of the times we use it are, in truth, moments of obfuscation. If used negatively, they obscure the reasons behind our feelings and prevent us from creating change in ourselves. If used positively, it’s often due to an aversion (paradoxically!) to admitting that we can want for the sake of wanting — ‘deserve’ makes ‘desire’ more palatable. As if we’re not allowed to desire something for its own sake, or for the simple pleasure of having and experiencing.

‘Deserve’ distances us from our choices by making our choices and our feelings into moral imperatives. It’s the path of feeling that all our feelings and choices are moral; and the next step down that path is assuming that anyone who disagrees with or denies those feelings and choices are therefore wrong. Bad. Undeserving.

Because, of course, the flipside to ‘deserve’ is ‘undeserve’. If there is the one, then there must be people who fill the other, and who decides that? Such are binaries. And people are far, far too complicated to rely upon binaries when making their choices, even though we do all the time.

I dislike ‘deserve’, because no one needs to justify their desires in order to have them, and only needs to justify acting on them when doing so means doing it at someone else’s expense. I’m sure someone could argue that lacking ‘deserve’ means people would go out willy-nilly taking whatever they want, for any reason; but let’s be honest, some people do that anyway — and then use ‘deserve’ to justify it.

But wanting is not choosing, and ‘deserve’ narrows the gap between them — or widens it. That is its function: to act as a gatekeeper between who gets and who doesn’t. So often, we gatekeep ourselves based on how we’ve been socialised in the world.

Removing ‘deserve’ from one’s vocabulary means having to face the choices we make, in the moment we make them, and without any illusions about what they are and why they’re on the table. Removing ‘deserve’ makes us more honest with ourselves, not just in terms of what we want but in terms of what we need, not only in the given moment but in the future. Will this choice enable my future needs as well as my present ones? What are my feelings surrounding it? Why am I feeling that way? Is giving in to these feelings the action of the person I want to be?

It’s a lot of work, when ‘deserve’ is such an easy shorthand. Unfortunately, when it comes to negative self-talk, it’s either looking at the brain weasel and seeing it for what it is, or it’s allowing it to keep nibbling. In the end, the nibbling will do far more damage — it’ll just be harder to see.

So, I come down on the side of ‘deserve’ having very little to do with anything. When you want, either you make the choice to have, or you don’t, and reap the consequences either way. If you can’t, then the choice is made for you, and there’s no illusory moral value to make you think otherwise. At least, then, there’s also no illusory moral value to make you feel like a bad person for it either.

And the end result of that conversation with my friend? She came to the conclusion that she most likely needs a rest; something which many of us feel we don’t ‘deserve’, but is most certainly something we cannot do without.

On unmet needs and grace

I forgot about last week’s blog post.

Well, I ‘forgot’ — in truth I had an unanticipated week off. By ‘unanticipated’ I mean that it wasn’t scheduled; but I could see it coming when the week started. I did my chapter of Broadsides just fine, but other than that … well. I did some writing on some other things.

Mostly, I read. Binge-read. A whole series through. Long one, too. It was the kind of week where, every morning, I’d think ‘I need to do something else’ and fail my will-save throw.

I tend to believe that laziness doesn’t exist. What society sees as laziness is a symptom of something else. Lack of motivation, lack of interest, inability, lack of knowledge — feeling sick, in body or in mind. There’s a myriad of reasons why squishy human beings fail at their goals, and yet we find it so hard to show some grace even to ourselves — not even enough to recognise that there’s something else wrong.

For me, hyperfixation is one of those things. If only I’d been disciplined enough. Better with my habits. Had more willpower. I could have stopped any time I wanted — why didn’t I?

Well, self, because you couldn’t. ‘Just stop’ doesn’t tend to do anything but make a person feel guilty for failing. There’s always something else under it. In this case, it isn’t that my habits weren’t good. It was that an unmet need was greater.

Halfway through the week I yielded. It’s not the first time I’ve had a slow spiral where I can see the trainwreck of my health in motion, but it is the first time I submitted to it just enough to keep the lowest maintenance going. I managed my basic chores. My daily health. My meals. Everything else went away — writing, blogging — but I kept my health up.

I suspect what I really, truly needed was to not have to be present for a while. The series is one of my favourites. It’s a good escape. But I don’t read much lately — I don’t trust many authors anymore. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to escape this way: consciously, and so thoroughly, that there was no room in my being for anything else. It’s a way of feeding my soul I haven’t done in perhaps far too long, and every creative needs that kind of feeding sooner or later.

So, I didn’t forget last week’s blog. I just didn’t have room for it.

According to my reading material on establishing one’s self publishing, deadlines are the be-all end-all. Don’t skip them, ever. But there’s deadlines and deadlines, priorities and triage. Book releases I haven’t skipped yet, and don’t intend to. Blog is slightly lower on my priority list. Slightly newer, too. Blogging hasn’t become a part of my self yet. It hasn’t become something I do and post without thinking, without having to think.

But I expect I’ll get there. I’ll attend to better habits, and tailor them accordingly. And I’ll get there faster for showing myself a bit of grace. If a person is a sum of their habits, then the person I’d like to be is a forgiving one, and I rank no less than anyone else who might need it.

After all, that’s also the kind of writer I’d like to be.

Research roundup #1

I do not have a specific topic for you today, alas. However! I love research, and it’s often fascinating to me to see where I’ve been (or had to revisit). I’ve often wished I kept better track of what I’ve had to research, so now here’s a list from me to you — at least for the past week. And, almost certainly, for future weeks (in separate posts, of course).

In the event you ever wondered where a writer’s research can take them, the Research Roundups make for an interesting browse. Or maybe you’ll find something you didn’t know you wanted more information on. Or possibly you just like playing detective, since I’m not labelling what the research was for. (Some of it is obvious. Some isn’t. Some might not even be for writing, or published works.)

You’ll notice many of these links are straight to wikipedia. When I’m just looking for a basic, easy recap, it’s usually the best place to start, if nothing else.

This week, the week of 28 May to 3 June, I researched:

New York City Hall — and the Manhattan Municipal Building (specifically its uses). In both cases I was looking into history, and what gets housed there (and when it started being so). At least one of those didn’t suit my purposes so I went ‘oy’ and creatively interpreted. As you can, when you’re writing alternate universes.

I also went looking into Albany, New York, and the New York Metropolitan Area. Let’s just say: distances. And whether Albany is in the Metropolitan Area or not. Nope, I’m not from the east coast of America.

Relatedly, I also went into Jimmy Walker and Fiorella La Guardia, mostly for the dates as to their terms (which I promptly decided to change anyway, but at least I know I’m doing it with intent). Of course, no foray into Beau James is complete without also looking at speakeasies (and their exact, uh, definitions) and the Prohibition. That led me to the Great Depression and World War 2 … again, I was looking at timelines and where I wanted to shove history off the rails. (I also mmaaay have forgotten the exact day of WW2’s start … but that’s what the internet is for, right?)

Not entirely related to New York State or the history thereof was the moon calendar in the United States for 2020. Really I just wanted some indication of whether characters would be looking at a full-ish moon or a waned one. Does it matter, for an alternate universe? Probably not. Did I want the foundation? Hell yes.

Leaving the United States, and on a dog-related front … sort-of … I went looking at tail language and kelpies. Okay, kelpies aren’t dog-related — but I couldn’t remember whether kelpies were strictly horses or had some dog-related myth to them. As is often the case, this was prelude to some more shoving-of-things-off-rails.

And speaking of myths, I also went looking for what kinds of titles the leader of a coven might hold. Possibly I looked at more pages than strictly necessary just for an answer to that question.

And, finally, I needed names, and went to my favourite name randomiser. No doubt I’l be back again — maybe I should keep track of how many times I use it.

Thus endeth this week’s quest through research hell; more like an easy jaunt, at least this time around. Tally-ho!

On beginnings and the merit of starting

Full disclosure: I’ve never had a blog before. I’m a writer and I’ve never written a blog. I also have a hard time with conventional journals. For the last month most of my thought process has run on the tracks of ‘where do I begin’ and ‘what if I have nothing to say’?

The second, given two seconds to look at the question, is pretty laugh-worthy. Even when I think I have nothing to say, I can usually find something, especially if given even a minor prompt. (The writing of this post alone has already given me some ideas for following ones.)

The first, as it transpires, was a pretty good landing-pad for my first post. Too on the nose? Maybe. But it’s a start.

And therein lays the theme: beginning and starting aren’t the same thing. Not even remotely. No matter how often we might use them interchangeably, as synonyms.

‘Beginning’ suggests that there is nothing that comes before it. Like the phrase ‘new beginnings’, the word tries to put some distance between it and whatever came before (if it even acknowledges there was a before). The beginning of a new book. The beginning of a new month. The beginning of a new habit. The word really likes to be paired with ‘new’. Like a clean slate, every time, as if the declaration of the word alone can leverage a change.

Except, it can’t. The only real beginning someone has is the day they’re born. When it comes to everything else, there is always something that came first. Even a new habit, a new book, relies on the foundation of the person you were when you decided to invest in that newness. Who you were defines how you experience it. No matter how much you might want a clean break, you’re always bringing something old to the new: yourself.

And if the person you were doesn’t know what you’re doing, doesn’t know how to start, proceed, or persist, then that new beginning can fizzle into same old same old.

There’s no good time to ‘begin’ — because there’s no beginning. Beginning wants to be alone in all its glory. Waiting for the right time can result in nothing ever happening.

There’s no good time to start, either. But at least a start isn’t waiting around for the stars to align just so. At least starting doesn’t care about who you were — or weren’t — beforehand. It doesn’t pretend that starting will change everything.

But it does create a bedrock; because once you’ve started, you can keep going. A beginning is so full of potential and dreams and wishes — the fact of it alone can throttle. How many writers have balked at a blank page?

Starting takes the pressure off. It isn’t trying to judge itself: it doesn’t matter whether the start was a crashlanding. You can always start over.

It isn’t a lot of difference. But when I contemplated the beginning of a blogging habit, the unseen potential path was overwhelming. When I considered starting with just one, the idea suddenly seemed much less intimidating. I had to pick a date, of course. I picked a lot of dates, and all of them weren’t right, because the person I was and the things I was trying to do left no room even for starting. If I’d been making a new beginning, I’d have muffed it.

But here it is, and it’s appropriate that it’s today — my birthday. I didn’t hold out for today to start. (Well, not for more than a few days, anyway.) It just happened to be close-by, and you know what? If there’s really no good time to start, then it might as well be on the day I began.

Are you searching for a new start? Here’s some links to things which have helped me not only with my starts, but with my continuations. A lot of them relate to writing. Some of them just relate to habits. When the potential of a new beginning was too much, all of these things gave me insight, knowledge, motivation or just plain structure when I really needed it.

Insight

Kris Rusch’s Business Musings is hands-down the most informative blog about writing and publishing I’ve ever seen. It peeled away the layers of the publishing industry until something that seemed arcane and rigid had clarity. This blog told me what was possible, and some aspects of how to get there. It is directed toward established writers and publishers, however, so if you aren’t, it needs to be approached from the perspective of the person you want to be, rather than the person you are now.

James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits, is the book about productivity I’ve been searching for, for years. It’s about habits rather than productivity, but the result is the same: a step-by-step process on how to plan for and become the person you want to be. Special shout-out to this article in particular, which talks about how your individual environment can make or break your ability to follow-through on habits, and how you can change it.

Kris’s blog showed me how a writing career was possible. Nicholas Erik’s Ultimate Guide to Book Marketing gave me the step-by-step framework on how to accomplish it as a newbie. It’s everything I needed to know about the basic process as a newcomer. This is a new edition (mine is last year’s), so there might be some additional stuff in there I haven’t read — but on the whole, if you’re looking to be an indie writer, this will demystify the process.

Tools

Only two of the tools on this list are overtly writing-related. The first, 4thewords, gamifies writing in a way like no other site I’ve ever seen. 4thewords turns quests, rewards and monster-battling into a vital motivational aid. This is the site that solidified my desire for a writing habit into an actual habit. You get one free month as a trial, so if you’re interested in signing up and aren’t already on the site, go ahead and use my referral code for extra goodies (AXAGR81353).

The other is Dabble, which is a browser-based word processor. If you’ve heard of Scrivener, it’s similar — except dramatically simplified. Dabble’s whole aesthetic is to remove choice paralysis by making itself as minimalist as possible. It has the folder-file hierarchy Scrivener popularised, a plot-grid function which works like sticky-notes (if sticky-notes had a TARDIS-like ability to contain more words than they should be able to physically handle when you click on them), and not a lot else in terms of bells and whistles. Except one thing: being browser-based, its cloud-sync function is better than Scrivener’s — and most other writing software — because you don’t need Dropbox or something else as a go-between.

Now, for the non-writing tools that have helped me the most.

Who wants to talk budgeting? It’s not considered particularly sexy unless you’re a special kind of nerd, but I’m a big believer in making taboos ordinary. When it came to managing my finances so I could even start this particular writing journey, You Need a Budget (YNAB) has been invaluable. YNAB’s system works on the basis of money you have right now, and that budgeting should be flexible and able to change with your priorities. Not only that, but the developers have dedicated oodles of time and effort to oodles of educational materials, so you can benefit from their experience without having to sign up to anything.

My other most-used non-writing tool is Airtable. See, I love spreadsheets. Love ’em. I’m not too skilled with formulas, but I love tracking data and I find it soothing to be able to input data, as long as it’s something that enables me to progress (wheel-spinning data-entry, let’s be honest, is just boring). Excel sheets are all well and good, but when I want to track non-numerical data, like book metadata and editing stylesheets, Airtable is king. Especially when you’re collaborating on, say, a co-written series and need to coordinate plot details.

These are the tools I use on the daily. I’ll be adding to this list as I continue — I am, after all, still closer to the start of my journey than any other part of it. I don’t need to be super organised, but I do like to have things in a place where I can easily find them again, and since they helped me in my starts, maybe they’ll help you too.

~Pur