My First Slip

Today was a weird-letter day.  Not a red-letter or regular letter.  Just weird.  Well, maybe what I really mean is slightly unsettling, rather than full-bore, freakout kind of weird.  It started with my alarm clock, which I actually slept to this morning.  That is pretty strange.  But then it was just a washed out, dislocated 'two-feet-to-the-side-of-myself' feeling, all day.

The weather was no help.  It started out weakly sunny, and then the sky sort of...congealed...is the only way I could think of it.  Congealed into lumpy clouds, and the air started to turn into thin syrup.  I was hoping it would get cooler without the sun, but the grayer the sky, the warmer the temperature.  Not blazing hot but enough combined with the humidity to lay on some lassitude.

Then the rains came.  Not cloudbursts, torrents or gully washers.  The rain was just enough to require the wipers on continuous.  And to bring out the inner moron in two-thirds of the driving public.  A simple errand was simple no longer; it only took longer.

When I arrived home,  I felt bleahhhh.  I also swore all the birds in my immediate vicinity were staring at me.  This wasn't helped when one of the first songs I heard after turning on the tunes tonight was re:stacks by Bon Iver, and there is a lyric in there involving a crow that really threw me off my feed.

Okay, I hear the sighs, I see the eyerolls...why is he telling us all this?  Simply this:

Today I received my first official rejection e-mail (letter) for a piece I submitted earlier this summer.  Now that isn't earth-shattering news, especially to anyone who writes for their daily bread, or is trying to write for the bread.  I have been advised to expect it, to not take it personally, to keep it at hand at least know that someone took the time to respond.

I know all that...but, still...combined with the events of the day, it did put me a little further in the weeds.

Nothing a little music therapy and an attitude adjustment couldn't help.  The e-mail did indicate that I had made it to the final round of consideration, and the final decisions were not easy due to the wealth of good material that had been submitted.  I was also forbidden to be discouraged (thank you, cher Angie!) and that I should submit more, including poetry.  That was pretty nifty!

I also took a tip from my writer/editor friend Rich (who writes stories and a novel and even a play, and also writes cool stuff HERE), who mentioned he has been printing out his rejection letters and wallpapering his office.  So that is what I did.  I printed out the letter and will hang it up where I can see it from wherever I am writing at the moment.  Gotta start somewhere...

Una pequeña petición, por favor:  Another reason I am blathering all this is because my little writing boat is stuck on a sandbar.  I'm flailing away with the oars and just can't get going.  I have an idea for another in my Henry David line of stories, but it refuses to gel, it won't show its face...and it's making me anxious.  So with that in mind, meine Lieblinge, can you spare a brother a story idea?  Anything, anything at all?  A topic?  Even a sentence fragment?  Maybe that could be the spark that lights my fire, and burns off the funk.  And funk-free gumbo is good for us all!