Rethinking...

I don't seem to respond well to overt pressure. The number of words I'd hoped to add is nowhere near the mark. That being said, it hasn't been unproductive. In fact, today, I realized that I'm rushing to the point of losing the story. So, I stepped back, pulled out the paper and pen, again, and fine tuned my heroine. She needed some necessary changes, because she simply wasn't right the way she was coming out on the page. There are a lot of things that fit, but there were little things niggling at me. Then I opened the document, and started at the beginning, carefully combing through the story, line by line. In the fourth paragraph, I realized that my POV was confusing, but couldn't figure out how. I've spent the last three hours fighting with it. Then it jumped out at me as if it were in glaring neon lights. One sentence in the paragraph switched from her POV to mine! Eep! A bit of rewriting, and what a difference!

New goal: Write as much as possible every day, keep track of the word count, and trust myself. And no beating up on myself.

My counselor tried to explain something I needed to work out: "There's this boss who is always criticizing the employees, telling them how bad they are, reprimanding them for every little infraction. This boss never lets up. There's always some way things could have been done better, faster, smarter. This boss even calls the employees nasty names. Why would anyone want to work for such a cruel and brutal boss? Especially when there's this other boss available. This other boss is gentle and patient. This other boss expects the employees to accept personal responsibility, but recognizes the value of each employee. This other boss encourages and acknowledges and rewards a job well done. Which boss would you rather work for?" Funnily enough, at the time I thought: I'd know how to respond under the rotten boss, but not the good boss. Then my counselor asked, "When are you going to fire the rotten boss and let the good boss take over?" I stared at him, and then blinked. Then it dawned on me that he was talking about me! I'd learned the unkind lessons so well I was still practicing them! He wanted me to learn a healthier way. Then he took it one step further: God isn't a mean boss. Jesus asks us to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. That's not the guidance of a mean boss. I'm still struggling to be a good boss to myself. It isn't easy since the old methods were beaten, literally and verbally, into me. But with Jesus as my teacher and guide, I will learn to be a good boss.