After a thirty day stay, we returned home from Ireland yesterday. In Ireland, it showered every day. Yes, every day. We moved constantly amongst my and my husband’s family, staying a couple of nights here, a few nights there, packing and unpacking suitcases, sharing beds, skipping showers, and cleaning-up after ourselves. It was a mixed bag of fun, laughter, love, tension, and grief, the kind that only family can bring.
I ate and drank too much, and was around other people constantly. I neglected to get time alone and to exercise enough. I need both. Hence I’m wearing a virtual “I survived” tee-shirt. I’m also tired. It’s not just the “jet-lag” kind of tired, it’s a defeated kind of tired. I’m feeling the need to cry. Yet the tears won’t come.
I didn’t write in Ireland. Not a word. Thirty days without writing. Maybe that’s why I’m hurting so much? Yet I’m not sure I have the energy to pick up where I left off, to revise all my stories that need saving; write the new stories that peck at me; log onto Zoetrope Virtual; check out Duotrope; catch-up with all the blogs and writers I follow. What of the novel(s) and story collections I want to write and publish? The energy required feels overwhelming.
I received an unprecedented number of rejections during the past thirty days, a battering amount and not a single acceptance. I tried to go a different direction in my latest stories. I tried to deliver what Randall Brown calls the “emergent precious thing.” Obviously, it’s not working.
I feel angry and frustrated. You know that physical feeling where something inside you just wants to get out, to move up through your stomach and throat and wrench out of you? I feel like I’m banging my head off the wall, like I’m trying to force something into existence that’s just not there, like I’m going to run myself ragged trying. Like I need to stop. Just stop. Like I blue it.
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It's surreal how many people seem to feel the same way at the same time. And yet, if you don't continue to write, there's no chance to breathe life into that thing which wants to exist.
ReplyDeleteMay I suggest that you change tactics? Maybe do something bizarre like write a children's story, or a fantasy tale, or even erotica -- anything, just to be writing, and writing something different?
I think you *need* to write.
And, welcome back, although I doubt you want to hear that just now.
You're not at all alone, trapped in the 'rejections' toy box. If you can see a crack of light in the ceiling, just keep pushing gently, getting stronger and stronger, until you can lift the lid, escape, and play...
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