Sigh.

Sometimes I get so tired of the writing business. Not the craft of it, mind you, or the nuts-and-bolts, aaaaahhhhh-I’m-so-busy-deadlines-are-eating-me aspect of it. And not the office-type work of contracts and tracking income/expenses. No, what makes me tired is politics.

I’m not going to get into here, but a writing organization to which I belong has a storied history of conflict. And not just conflict but table-flipping, curse-you-to-hell, fuck-you-I’m-taking-my-ball-and-going-home arguements. The kind of fights that result in family estrangements. Except these fights happen all over the internet for the entire world to see. It makes my head hurt. Not because the conflict is happening–the issues the conflicts are about absolutely need to be discussed–but the manner in which the conflict happens is distressing.

I just want to write stories for people to read. I want to make someone’s life a little better, even if it’s only for ten minutes. Internal political dramas don’t stop me from doing my job, of course, but it’s distracting. It makes it harder to do my job sometimes. And that makes me tired.