Watermarks

Trying to find my focus. I have been very distracted since the Oregon workshop, working on getting some of my short fiction available electronically. This process is unfortunately a lot of work. I’ve managed to get 11 stories available on Smashwords and Amazon. And I admit, it’s been a pleasant distraction from writing which isn’t going well. Just can’t seem to write anything that’s any good. Stories I really thought would do well have gotten the exact opposite reaction that I’d expected. Don’t know why my fiction still sucks after all these years and why everyone else seems to get better and I don’t. Maybe I should just keep writing stories, but stop sending them out? Maybe after writing a couple hundred more stories I will have moved a little bit forward. I love writing the stories; the rejections and continued failure are just really getting me down.

Sorry, downer post. This horrid dry spell is my worst on record and I just can’t seem to break it. Three years of no sales is a terribly long time. And it’s really getting to me.

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Eyesight is intermittent for reading and computer work. It will take some time, they told me. Six to eight weeks. So I’m a bit cranky about my vision at the moment. That combined with the flood of rejections that magically decided to appear when I couldn’t see to resubmit them. So now I have a bazillion things to get back out and I’m not handling the rejections well at all. I’m already tired of being told no. I think if my real life circumstances weren’t so messed up, this might be easier to handle. Just so tired of hearing no and dealing with bad news. And all the old issues surfacing again. What if I never sell another story? What if my stuff’s as good as it’s gonna get? What if I just don’t have the skill? I don’t even know why I’m failing, so I don’t even know how to fix the problem. Should I not bother with short stories and start writing novels again? God, I wish I had talent. This is exactly where I was two years ago (when my personal life began falling apart), so I’m not sure how to get over this chasm (since I just walked away from it last time; it was just too deep and too wide).

Everything in my personal life is fail right now and I feel that old tiredness creeping into my body. With the death of my father and divorce of my brother, my family has pretty much disintegrated. With the added stress of dealing with my father’s failing business, my brand new need to find a new job, and my continued struggle to get over a terrible breakup — just seems stupid to subject myself to yet even more rejection of something so intensely personal as writing. I am struggling, I am questioning, I am overwhelmed. I wish I could divorce myself of the emotional attachment to writing, but for me, it’s just impossible. I think I could have handled this better if I’d been able to get the works back out as soon as they came back. But the stack of stuff needing to go back out is substantial.

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Came home from surgery to 3 rejections, one for a novel. Couldn’t even read them, had to get my mom to read them to me. Got majorly screwed at my job (my boss thought it best to tell me the day before my first eye surgery. Sigh. Feeling really, really low. Can’t seem to be good at anything in this life. I think I’m as close to rock bottom as I can get. Looks like I’ve got to look for a new job since my boss threw me under the bus. And I can’t even see well enough to update my resume or get these damned stories back out again.

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I thought my work had improved, that I was writing pretty good stuff. But it appears that I’m deluded. Watching all my friends and colleagues move forward over the years while I was stuck in some purgatory of failure was really hard. One of the reasons I stopped writing. I didn’t think I had the talent that my fellow writers had. Now that I’ve started back, all the tiny little inroads I’d made just getting to the main editors desk are now gone. I just got a form rejection from a major market that was at least giving me personal rejections before I stopped writing. Just not sure I have enough fight left in me to deal with the rejections at this level. It’s just one stupid rejection, I know, but it brings back all those old feelings of self-doubt and worthlessness I thought I had overcome. A fucking form. Why did I even bother coming back to a genre that has never accepted my work and never will value my work? I was prepared for rejections. Just not forms when I used to get personals. Sorry, this really hit me harder than I thought it would.

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