back to basics

I get complacent, used to things going the way I want them to, in life even if not in my interpersonal relationships. So I was not prepared for the email I got yesterday, advising me that I'd not been chosen to participate in the workshop for which I'd applied.

Rejected.

Okay. Rejection is normal for writers, but this is a new level of rejection. The piece I sent in was not finished... I knew that. But the class was in advanced fiction, not "show me you already know it all fiction." My sense was that they wanted samples that showed you knew the basics.

Maybe I was wrong.

I'm okay with not finishing first, but not even to be in the honorable mention list is harsh.

Yesterday, I was ready to quit. Yesterday, I let the full moon come in my bedroom window and sparkle off tears that were self indulgent and stupid. "Real writers would be up writing," I whimpered. (Oh to be able to live in purple prose!)

To which my bedmate inquired, "Do you want to go write?"

And I replied no. But didn't sleep. Or anything else for the voyeurs out there.

Today, I resolved to get back to the things I know. To reestablsh the confidence in my work that I've let slip away. I'd sent the piece to an old friend who used to be a fan, and got back insult upon injury. "You can do better than this. Who are you listening to? I see a lot of voices in this piece, but not one of them is yours."

He's wrong of course. Mine is there, but it doesn't know what it's supposed to be doing. It is confused.

I opened up my most recent paper journal this morning, and wrote the obligatory three pages. It was even legible, which clues me in already that there is a problem. If my words aren't coming faster than I can pen them, they are forced, unnatural. I read back over what I've written and see mostly masochistic lashings... all the things I said I'd have done by "now" that I've not even begun. Plenty there to kill all the creativity.

Then I open the word-a-day email, with this quote: Grasp the subject, the words will follow. -Cato the Elder, statesman,
soldier, and writer (234-149 BCE)

So that is the question of the day. WTF is the subject? Pretty sure it isn't complacency.