I Have Become Accustomed To Rejection

Outstanding submissions: 9

Rejections: 3, personal

The days grow darker, friends and the rejections continue to pile up.

In this week’s low  self-esteem chronicles, personal rejections from Potomac Review (we enjoyed this piece IT ISN’t RIGHT), Agriculture Reader (no, but please do query again if we do another issue) and NOO Journal (nice emotion, sneaky ending). I appreciate the personal responses, I do, but I’m at a bit of a loss with how to proceed. I feel like I have nothing good in the hopper. I’m hardly sending any work out even though I’m sitting on like 20 stories I could be submitting.  Je n’ai plus d’espoir. Je suis désolé, désolé, désolé. I am a broken record. I could use some good news. I want to be a good writer with good writing to send into the world. I am, perhaps, a bad writer.

I have taken quite ill this week. My nasal passages are completely swollen shut. My lips are extraordinarily chapped. My face is dry and sore.  I have a bit of a cough. I feel weak and shaky. I have no appetite. My tongue is swollen. I am the picture of… something unpleasant. Today at the gym while working out with my trainer, I felt so tired and gross, I thought, this is rock bottom.

And yet, I keep getting compliments, like last night, out at dinner with friends, one of them said, “Wow you look amazing tonight,” and I thought she was joking so I got quite huffy about it and then sheepish when I realized she was serious.  Something about my sickly pallor is quite lovely indeed.

I would say more but I’m working on my dissertation and still with the job search (which is fruitful but quite hectic) and personal writing and planning my spring semester class which, blessed be, only meets once a week! Were we to diagram the sentences in this post, a grammar teacher would probably have a psychotic break.

There’s a new season of The Bachelor. I wrote about the first episode.

There’s a new Funny Women column by Susan Schorn up at The Rumpus. Go, read, enjoy.