Feeling Like A Reject...

 

I’m almost sure the editor at Big Suspense Story Magazine (Not their real name, obvs) didn’t really know how much I needed that little burst of hope that started off my January.  Or how much having something come out in a nationally-available magazine that leans so heavily on my own, disability, experience might have given me some optimism at a time that makes it hard to find. Maybe even closer to impossible, but I hadn’t known how important placing the story I’d had sitting around for about ten years felt to me until it didn’t happen this week.   I was so determined to do something unspecified to try to make “For Ladies Only” my Big Break in a way I hadn’t managed when I was in BSM last, during the Great Recession.  I guess I could have shelved that particular anxiety, possibly forever, along with the contrived ones about work-life balance and Handling Early Success.

They didn’t do it *to* me, but scurrying around to cut over a thousand words just to have someone pass—well, it’s hard not to feel that way. (Not really sure what changed between January and May, but in the immediate moment, not wanting to blow my fifteen minutes of fame, or virality, on hurt feelings, I exaggerated my level of excitement with my novel (.

Although “Wedded Twist” is flowing along in all its wackiness, it’s hard to connect with my teenaged self who always used to stop by the Js in the bookstore so that I might see the spot on the shelf where my book might one day appear.  I don’t imagine that, anymore. I’m not sure what to replace that image with, a lot of wishes seem out of reach.

If I post this, my wish to quit writing is kind of half-hearted, but not completely gone. Wondering if I don’t have something important that real talents have, besides a romantic history that might use up my fingers when I count. (Maybe that’s one thing that makes me Every writer, for once.)

Does anyone really like the happy-talk rejections? Does anyone really think we’re all *so great*(if I’m so great, publish me!) Kind of rubs it in for them to say “Got anything else?” when I want to extend a well-shaped middle digit.