Well call me happy. I realize I'm a newcomer, but how that four letter C word is still in use is a little beyond me..but that's another blog...
Anyway, I had read one Dixie Hemingway book (Blaize's series) and despite the appearance of the word catsitter in the title, Even Catsitters Get the Blues, the b0ok - and the author - are more edgy, quirky, a little naughty, and laugh out loud funny than you might think!
I was lucky enough to meet Blaize at Sleuthfest last month and asked her to come visit us at Jungle Red.
Here's Blaize's take on Inner Critics....something I know I can identify with and I bet you can, too.
Maybe mystery writers are harder on themselves than other people, or maybe we're just more willing to admit it. Whatever, it seems like any time I talk to another mystery writer, we end up laughing and/or groaning about our inner critics. Mine not only wakes me in the middle of the night to tell me I've given a singular verb to a plural noun, it also condemns my work habits. If I sleep late one morning and slog around all day in a ratty robe and slippers and don't write a lick but eat potato chips and watch some sappy tear-jerker on TV, my inner critic immediately scorns me for being a loser who sleeps late and slogs around in her robe and eats potato chips. It doesn't stop there, either. It goes on to say I'll always be a loser and there's nothing I or anybody else in the whole friggin' universe can do about it.
On other days, even if I set my alarm for an ungodly hour when birds aren't awake yet, my inner critic continues to sneer at my slothfulness. So I eat oatmeal for penance and work nonstop to demonstrate that while I may be a potato-chip-eating slob, I am valiantly trying to become disciplined, not to mention shampooed and flat-ironed. I'm perfumed too, because my inner critic says I should use up all those free cosmetic-counter samples before they evaporate. Not that they have anything to do with writing, but because scent evaporation would be wasteful and therefore further proof of my slothfulness. Besides, if I don't try them I'll never know how they smelled, which would be some kind of loss of an opportunity for research, and God knows being a writer carries with it a mandate for research.
There's also the matter of dress. My inner critic would prefer me to be the kind of writer who wears floaty hand-painted silk dresses with vague ruffles falling from them. That will never happen, of course, no matter how good I smell, but if a movie is ever done of my life I hope the actress playing me will wear things like that. That's one place where my inner critic and I are in agreement, although I doubt I'd be a better writer if my jeans didn't have shaggy edges.
The only good thing about my inner critic is that she's been around as long as I have, and both of us have become a bit less tyrannical. Sometimes I catch her shrugging her shoulders and rolling her eyes in a who-the-blip-cares way, pretty much like I do about a lot of stuff that used to make me rabid. My hope is that the next time I sleep late and slog around all day in my pj's and watch dumb movies and eat potato chips, she'll approve it as research.
Rosemary
