The Little Hater

Whenever I take an extended break from blogging, I try to avoid apologizing for it on my return. Because that's boring. This video by Jay Smooth, however, is not boring, and perfectly describes what's kept me from here. Thanks to Karen, my guru/role model, for sending it to me.

Yup. That's it. I think the lesson here is "don't take a break," but that's easier said than done.

I'd love to hear from you guys: does this happen to you? What do you do about it? In addition to the perfectionism/guilt spiral, I also begin to believe, without fail, that everyone is mad at me. Everyone! I realize this is insane, but the insane part of me still believes it.

More soon, including an ANNOUNCEMENT (all caps!) coming next week.

My last few posts for Babble

I know I mentioned a while back that I'm writing for Babble about, well, writing--but if I was a good person and blog-contributor I'd be updating you whenever I have a new post over there. Turns out I am the worst. Here are my last three posts:

The thrilling, depressing, but ultimately triumphant story of how we got our book published.

Sometimes two authors jabbering about their writing habits can make you want to give up and die. Or maybe that's just me?

I liked these articles about writing. You will like them, too.  

We're leaving today to visit family. I will be gone all week and intend to stay offline the whole time, but we'll see how that pans out. (Sometimes Mama gets the shakes and needs her Twittertime.) I'm bringing my sketchbook and will be attempting to draw my niece and nephew with Henry while taking breaks between cuddle time (my idea) and endless rounds of hide-and-seek (theirs).

We return home just in time for my grand jury duty! I can live-blog grand jury duty, right?

You need to be alive in order to make stuff

I wrote a post about writers and depression over at Babble. Here's an excerpt:

There has long been this notion that in order to be a writer or artist, you should also be an emotional car wreck. That–whether you struggle with addiction, depression, anxiety, psychosis, or a heady mélange of all of the above–your demons are somehow part and parcel of your identity as an Artist. With this in mind, too many talented writers and artists have gone and drank themselves to death or allowed their illnesses free reign, because it was more important to serve the Muse than live a rich, full, happy life, and there was certainly no way to do both.

This is a steaming pile of horseshit.

Come on over and tell me what you think, won't you? Thank you, I love you, more soon when I'm done wrapping these eleventy billion gifts.

I have a new blog!

I'm so excited about this one. When Catherine asked me to contribute something to this new thing at Babble she was doing, my first inclination was to decline, because I'm sort of done writing about parenting. I mean, I'm still going to talk about being a parent, but the "look at this cute thing my kid said" material is no longer mine to share. My last gig, they wanted me to do that and pretty much nothing but that, and I just--I can't, anymore. My son is almost 9 and he (rightly) wants his privacy. So there it is. Besides, what little we decide that I can share with you, I'm going to save for Finslippy. Finding anything to share with another parenting site would be challenging, to say the least.

But then we talked, and it turned out she didn't need me to share cute relatable Henry stories, after all. I could write about anything. I knew that I wanted to talk about writing, and fear. The fear that keeps us from doing the writing that (many of us) need to do to stay sane. I think about this stuff all the time, I've covered it before on this blog, Eden and I did a panel on the topic for the Mom 2.0 conference, and I still have things to say. So why not make it the subject of my blog?

So here it is. Write Anyway, my new blog, part of Babble Voices.  I'll be writing once a week, and I already have these two posts up: Who do I think I am?  and Why "Write anyway"? I hope you'll take a look.

Update on August 21, 2011 by Alice

Hello again! To those of you who have asked for information on the RSS feed, the URL is this:

http://blogs.babble.com/babble-voices/alice-bradley-write-anyway/feed/

Thanks, and I'm so glad you're as excited as I am!