Mindspace - Why I Guard Mine Jealously

I am extremely careful with who an what I allow to influence my mindspace. For those of you that have no idea what that even means, let me offer some definitions.

Mindspace is the interior monologue and self-analytic function of my brain. It is the part of my persona that decides what I should be doing, how , and why. It is my internal orderly, my judge, jury and executor (no, not executioner, that would be morbid.)

When I allow other people to critique my work, whether writing or other arts, even reading reviews, I allow them to influence my mindspace. Bad critiques have the ability to throw my head out of whack, to put it bluntly.

This, in itself, isn't that huge of a problem. I have a strong ego, my equilibrium will right itself eventually. The problem is the hour, or day, or days, I spend obsessing over whatever it was. I lose time. Time better spent working on new ideas, or writing new words, or learning about epubbing. Spent on someone else's ideas instead.

For instance, I've gotten critiques that were fairly harshly worded. Not necessarily wrong, just not gentle enough for my fragile self. which lead to a day of turning the words over in my mind. Instead of a day working on my next story. The solution is to not expose myself to critiquing like that. I'm very, very picky about first readers now.

Which brings up the topic of Armadillocon. I'm attending this year, my first writing convention. I've done gaming cons before, back in the day, but never a learning focused one like this. I'm hoping to get a lot out of the weekend, as well as link up with some other Austin writers, expand my circle and all. I am leery about the actual writing workshop part, but hopefully it will be helpful and not, well, a poor guest in my mindspace.

More on Armadillocon tomorrow.