Writing: Success & Rejection

 I keep trying and rejections keep coming in.

Here I am, an hour since getting home, getting at email and wanting to get the bike out. The weather has broken, I need the exercise.

I also have all this paper I defaced over 10 years in prison. During work, washing off pans, I realized this recreation is an opportunity. I see now where I under-wrote one character for sure and maybe another.

And the email brought from LitHub, On the Joy of Literary Acceptance (and the Freedom of Rejection) by Amy Grace Loyd, which I just read instead of working on my own stuff, or getting the bike outside. It bucked me up.

... In my classes focused on the process of revision and editing, I ask my students to read Carver’s stories before Lish edited them and after. Most prefer the style that Lish created for Carver—the speed and artful spareness of it. But not all, and in that is mystery and part of the richness of being human, of storytelling and story-making, of art in general. It is wholly unpredictable, and in this way defies cynicism—that we know all the available scripts out there too well.

Maybe there will be a home for others to see my stuff, and maybe it is not important:

Sometimes a no is an affirmative choice. It is freedom. It concedes that we are not here simply to make a living but to a make a life all our own and this should be a process that denies you the reductive view of yourself or your work as a mere product, but as something that is evolving and evolving you. To wit, Uleland says, “No writing is a waste of time. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good. It has stretched your understanding. I know that. Even if I knew for certain I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would keep on writing.”

And with that I will close and suggest you read the full article.

sch 5/14