Cut Bait?
I've been pitching this book, a possible series, for more than two years.
No nibbles...well...maybe a couple of nibbles and some tentative bites.
But I haven't reeled in an agent or an editor.
I've been published - but in short fiction and nonfiction and only sporadically.
I see and hear of others' successes and I wonder if it's time for me to pack it in - stop writing.
Why should I keep subjecting myself to ongoing rejection? Isn't enough that I've been rejected by men I loved. Does my writing have to be rejected, too?
I'm not a writer wanna-be. I write daily. I've written countless short stories and articles. I've completed three novels and I revising two of them. I submit. I work hard at it. I guess just not hard enough.
I can't stop writing. I know that. I have all these stories that need to come out. Maybe I should just stop submitting and deluding myself that I can be published in novel length.
After all, just who am I that I should be a published novelist?
No college degree.
No MFA.
No years of journalism.
I'm just a nurse. Nothing at all, really. Good enough to clean up excrement and take care of the dying and the confused and the barely living- but not much good for anything else, as society views. A nurse with no college degree is almost worthless.
Except for my memoir.
Maybe that will get me published.
What a hoot that would be. I get published because of the freakin' job I didn't want and drag myself to daily. For some reason that makes me a bit sick to my stomach. It's almost like the universe is saying, that's all I am good for - clean up piss, shit, vomit - get punched, knocked out - and still never good enough- always falling short.
And my fiction?
Maybe I have to finally realize that the last forty-five years of my professional life is what I deserved - nothing more. Maybe I need to stop reaching for a fifty year old dream. Maybe it's time to just grow up.
Maybe I'm still sucking on those sour grapes.
Or maybe I'm trying too hard.
Or maybe I'm just in a funk.
Or maybe I just got another rejection.
Fish or cut bait?
I guess I'll just put another worm on the hook.
No nibbles...well...maybe a couple of nibbles and some tentative bites.
But I haven't reeled in an agent or an editor.
I've been published - but in short fiction and nonfiction and only sporadically.
I see and hear of others' successes and I wonder if it's time for me to pack it in - stop writing.
Why should I keep subjecting myself to ongoing rejection? Isn't enough that I've been rejected by men I loved. Does my writing have to be rejected, too?
I'm not a writer wanna-be. I write daily. I've written countless short stories and articles. I've completed three novels and I revising two of them. I submit. I work hard at it. I guess just not hard enough.
I can't stop writing. I know that. I have all these stories that need to come out. Maybe I should just stop submitting and deluding myself that I can be published in novel length.
After all, just who am I that I should be a published novelist?
No college degree.
No MFA.
No years of journalism.
I'm just a nurse. Nothing at all, really. Good enough to clean up excrement and take care of the dying and the confused and the barely living- but not much good for anything else, as society views. A nurse with no college degree is almost worthless.
Except for my memoir.
Maybe that will get me published.
What a hoot that would be. I get published because of the freakin' job I didn't want and drag myself to daily. For some reason that makes me a bit sick to my stomach. It's almost like the universe is saying, that's all I am good for - clean up piss, shit, vomit - get punched, knocked out - and still never good enough- always falling short.
And my fiction?
Maybe I have to finally realize that the last forty-five years of my professional life is what I deserved - nothing more. Maybe I need to stop reaching for a fifty year old dream. Maybe it's time to just grow up.
Maybe I'm still sucking on those sour grapes.
Or maybe I'm trying too hard.
Or maybe I'm just in a funk.
Or maybe I just got another rejection.
Fish or cut bait?
I guess I'll just put another worm on the hook.
posted by Mitzi at Wednesday, March 18, 2009
1 Comments:
Whatever you do, keep fishing.
I don't know how many times in life I could have packed it in, and taken the safe road, but I didn't. I gambled. I took chances. sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. But I have LIVED.
You have to live life knowing that ANYTHING can happen. You hope for the good, try to avoid the bad, but mostly we get by riding whatever waves the storms of life throw at us.
You won't catch any fish if you don't bait your hook. They don't jump out of the water and into your hands.
Keep fishing. I can't promise that you will catch anything, but maybe if you are lucky, something will catch you!
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