Saturday, January 30, 2010

Too hard on myself?

Today, I ran errands with my daughter, took her to dance class, picked up lunch for my family (they were painting in the children's dept at my local public library), typed the minutes for the non-profit board where I serve as secretary, printed my history journal, read a GQ, showered, waxed my legs, helped a friend with a query letter, reminded my daughter how to play jacks, answered three phone calls from my mother regarding me doing her taxes tomorrow, and got a rejection letter, a form rejection letter at that.

The rejection didn't even sting, which I suppose is a good thing, but it's only my second form rejection. I tell my writer friends to expect 100 rejections before they can call themselves a writer, and who knows how many it will take before success. But form rejections create a sense of complacency in me.

First and foremost, I write for me. The more seriously I try to play the publication game, and the more published writers I meet who still work at their full-time jobs and/or have to deal with the same waiting/rejection process from their own editors, the less I want to deal with the game. That doesn't mean I plan to stop writing, it just means I am losing my drive to 'get it published.' It will return, it always does.

Meanwhile, I beat myself mercilessly for not meeting my writing goals. I feel like I'm not writing enough. What's enough? I don't know. Did I sit down and make myself quotas? No. Did I make a milkshake? Yes.

I think I'm still recovering from a stressful week and the constant demands don't help that, but such is life. It's 6:30. My husband is putting our daughter to bed, and while I should be writing or prewriting, I'm counting the minutes until I can go to bed.

I also did some plotting regarding Basilie and her parish priest. I realized the obvious parallelism/symbolism between her pregnancy and that of Elizabeth in the Bible. Plus, Basilie attends Saint Jean Baptiste... Yup, John the Baptist.

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