yesterday i put on my husband's windbreaker and found a rejection from a canadian lit mag that i really want to be in. it was a handwritten note, dated april. the editor explained what didn't work for him in the story--too disjointed and asked me to submit again. for a beginner writer such notes are gold. it was supposed to be disjointed, as the protagonist is a mental patient, but i've been told more than once already that i need to somehow make it more coherent without necessarily sacrificing the disjointed quality.
other than that and a bunch of other rejections i have nothing of substance to share. i've been making heroic efforts of getting up and writing after my kids wind down for the day. this isn't as easy as it seems, as the youngest goes to bed 2 hours later than the oldest, and then one of them invariably wakes me up in the middle of the night screaming / dreaming, and then the same youngest invariably wakes up 1 hour before the oldest. i think i am getting about 6 hours of sleep, and maybe that's why most of my stories have a disjointed, delirious quality to them. just kidding. this is how i see the world. but i do need more sleep and more time to write, and this is not happening lately.
i've had thoughts of taking a break from this blog. i will think some more, and post an update.
hey, good to hear from you!
ReplyDeletesome rejections are actually almost as nice as acceptances. especially when you are a beginner. so i was pretty please to find that one, especially from fiddlehead. :-)