Stop trying to save me, inner critic

I scheduled reminders in my google calendar so that I don’t forget I have a blog. As opposed to forgetting I have a website; that one’s a deliberate task avoidance issue… sighs. Yeah, yeah… I’ll get to fixing that. Soon…

I was listening to a new podcast - I know, right. It’s so unlike me. Petal to the metal is from J Thorn and Rachael Herron. They ‘met’ talking on other podcasts or being interviewed by Joanna Penn or … god, I don’t know, somewhere in the web realm.

This week they were talking about FoMO - or fear of missing out.

Wikipedia defines this as:

Fear of missing out or FoMO is "a pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent". This social angst is characterized by "a desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing".

I’ve told you before that I am the worst (best?) book hoarder. Especially if they are free for a limited time, or price reduced or whatever. I subscribe to all the ebook notifiers like BookBub and Freebooksy. I will grab a free boxed set not having read a word of the author. That ‘normally $X.XX now $0.00’ label gets me every time.

I adore books. I believe that you cannot have too many of them. But this also stems from an incident where I did indeed miss out on a price reduced copy. And I was annoyed with myself. So now I will grab it and rationalise that I can delete it later if it turns out to be unreadable.*

But the FoMO isn’t what my brain gets the heebies about. I’ll give you an example from my current work in progress. I was jammed for the last couple of days on the idea that my witch main character, works hard, pushes herself, upgrades her powers and finds a previously untapped power of fire. And she uses that in the final showdown.

My issue is that I am concerned that some reviewer will say ‘yeah? So there must be skeletal remains left’.

I’m worried about a non-existent review for a book I haven’t even finished writing.

…

Yeah. It isn’t logical.

I’m writing a witch and a shapeshifter. Neither of which is logical.** And a shapeshifter that wears a suit when he’s human to match his cat markings.***

The bad guy disappearing in a flutter of ash is a common trope in TV witch shows like Charmed or Bewitched. It’s arguable that people might even EXPECT it to happen in a witch fight.

So why do I latch onto that as a fear? Probably because it’s my inner critic trying to ‘save’ me again and it’s chosen to pick that particular thing to be problematic about.

Stop trying to save me, inner critic.

~~~

* this is how you end up with two thousand ebooks jammed in your kindle app, AM.

** please don’t @ me with comments about how witchcraft is a valid belief system. I'm talking book witches.

*** shapeshifters keeping their clothes on… well the trad Hulk does. Twilight wolves busted out of their clothes when they shifted but never seemed to be naked when they turned human again. What? Seeing Alex Meraz’s ass was high on my list of things to do. I say ‘was’ because my wish was granted in ‘Never back down 2’ And yes, I own it on DVD. Smiles.

Links:

The Petal to the metal

Bookbub

Freebooksy