The March 1636 Lantern is Published

Okay, The March Lantern is available. Those fast on the draw may have noticed that I mistakenly published it as free access for 56 minutes.  I was just so worn by finishing it that I failed to adjust the publishing details. But it's behind a paywall now, I'm so sorry.

The reason this thing is such a bugbear for me is twofold. In the first place, publishing anything comes with hesitancy, because like any writer, I constantly doubt the value of my own work. I can't see it through the lens of other people, so I have no idea really if it's good or not. So, irrationally, I struggle in fear to put it out there.

The other side of that coin is that if it isn't good, then what the hell am I doing all the work for?  This is also a form of poison in an artist's head. Work is work. I was remarking to my partner yesterday that by dinner time, as I was incredibly stiff throughout my joints, that it comes from concentrating so hard that any movement of one's muscles becomes a distraction. Thus, when I'm working at anything that is extremely particular, as The Lantern is, not just in writing but in overall layout, the ads, the voice the "writers" use, physically I become more and more stone-like and more and more my whole effort is toward my thinking process. Eight hours of this and my joints get very ugly when I get up to eat something.

I don't experience these symptoms with a blog post. There's nothing riding on this. I'm not charging for this. It doesn't matter if I don't write this. What I write has no long-term consequences for me. Thus I can write calmly, fuck around even, and it doesn't matter. I can't see The Lantern in those terms. It matters too much to me.

Anyway, it's published. Yay.