Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 136 Editor's Choice: 9
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Take your mother out of the equation.
[Read the article: My brother abused me -- now our parents want us all together again!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You're absolutely right that your mother is doing something hideously manipulative by insisting on this all-or-nothing scenario vis a vis the anniversary party. She absolutely does not have the right to do it, and any -- I mean any -- negative fallout that would result from the party's cancellation will be on her head, now and forever. It's not your fault that she doesn't understand your trauma.
So, for the time being, disregard your mother and her stated wants and needs. Do that, and then think about how you really feel about this opportunity to see your brother. Because in a way, it is an opportunity. It's a neutral situation in which neither of you has had to make that awkward, difficult overture to the other party to resume communicating. It's simply a matter of both of you showing up to the same event, an event of which neither of you is the focus. Given all that, I think it's fair to say that you'd be hard-pressed to find an easier occasion on which to see your brother. (Cary's exactly right about that part.)
It would be easy to use your mother as an excuse to avoid dealing with the real issues between you and your brother (or, more accurately, your internal issues re: your brother). And those issues are complicated: You've obviously built up a very thick wall against your brother (for good reason), and after all these years, part of you may yearn for some kind of reconciliation with him -- but those feelings defy logic to the part of you that built up the wall in the first place. You need the space to deal with these questions without considering your mother. At the same time, you can't ignore the fact that the part of you that wants to reconcile (if that part indeed exists) probably won't get a better chance to do so than at this party.
So, focus on your own needs, wants, and feelings. Really think about your options, but only in terms of what they mean to you, not what they mean to the fate of the anniversary party or your mother or anyone else in your family. And once you've done that work, give an honest answer and don't look back.
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Deadlines
[Read the article: I got the writing fellowship -- so now I'm terrified!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm just going to talk about one aspect of your letter, because the psychological stuff is completely normal and only proves that you are, in fact, a writer. Now that that's out of the way... for some of us it can be hard to stick to self-imposed deadlines when they're not imposed for a particular reason (other than forcing ourselves to write in a given time frame). Luckily, external deadlines are everywhere. You just need to seek them out.
One source of deadlines is taking a writing class, but since you're coming right out of grad school, you may not love that idea.
Another is entering writing contests. Those are all over the place, in every writing discipline, taking place throughout the year. Find one that interests you, that doesn't have a ridiculous entry fee, that has judges/prizes/guidelines that sound good, and take the plunge. Now, presto, you have a deadline.
But let's say the deadline is a year from now, and you're writing a 300-page book. 300 pages in a year is a specific goal, but too vague of one. It doesn't tell you how much you need to get done this month, or this week, or on Tuesday. And those kinds of mini-deadlines are just as important as the main deadline; not just to the goal itself, but to your sanity.
People who aren't writers don't understand this, but being a writer generally means that your primary instinct is to avoid writing. You avoided writing by writing that letter to Cary; I'm avoiding it by responding to you. It's just a fact of life. You know how it works. So how to get over that hurdle? Well, obviously, there are two ways to set writing goals. One is in terms of time; the other is in terms of pages. You're writing a book; I say start with time. You have all day, every day, to write (a position that I simultaneously envy and fear), so how about this for a start: two uninterrupted hours in the morning; two uninterrupted hours in the afternoon.
Yes, in theory you could spend more time than that, but you have other things to do (errands, house stuff, and for god's sake leisure time) so I don't think you'll feel empty and guilty spending four hours a day writing. Don't worry right now about making goals that aren't ambitious enough; worry about not making them at all. Better to plan for four hours a day and write for four hours a day than to plan some vague notion of spending "lots of time" writing and end up barely writing at all.
And as far as your emotional worries go, if you spend multiple hours a day truly engrossed in your writing -- which, by all means, you should think of as your job right now, since you're doing it and you're getting paid for it -- then I don't think you need to worry about getting overly needy and clingy with your boyfriend. It's all in how you look at it. Is writing merely a tool to keep you distracted from missing your boyfriend? Or is it your dream, your art, your ambition, your livelihood, your reason for existing? You know it's the latter. Talk to your boyfriend about it when he comes home. Tell him about the work you did that day and what it meant to you. And enjoy the fact that you have both of these wonderful, fulfilling elements in your life at the same time.