It
is so amazing to me how easily one falls off the track.
After
Sunday’s post I was feeling pretty pumped. I even had an okay day at work on
Monday and nearly half of the day on Tuesday, until around 11:50 am. Multiple
things went awry over the next couple hours and soured my mood. I dealt with
things as best I could, sharing my feelings quietly with the co-workers
involved. But I still came home bummed out.
Then
I opened my email. That didn’t help at all! I already heard back from the
market where I had submitted my piece of flash fiction and it was already
rejected. It is always nice to hear back – the worst is submitting something
and waiting months to hear anything on it. But, really? Five days?
I
then went on the ROW80 website and read (for the first time) Eden’s post from
Monday. Wow. I know why I didn’t read it the day before. I was meant to read it
last night, when I once again, for the hundredth time, just wanted to throw in
the towel.
Funny.
At work yesterday afternoon, I don’t remember how we got talking about it, but I
mentioned my other blog, the Dino Chronicles, and told my co-workers that my
last post was written by my dog, Dino, and that I thought it was rather cute.
Someone asked me, “so you like to write?” I answered that I loved to write and it
is all I’ve ever wanted to do and that I wouldn’t be working at the clinic
right now if I could make money writing.
Shoot
me for not coming up with the proper transition, but I’m just going to say, I
don’t think I really fell off the track after all.
Hope
everyone is having a good week, or at least is able to mix the bad with the
good and realize, hey, everything’s going to turn out the way it is supposed
to.
 |
| (The only picture of tracks that I took on our recent vacation.) |
I never decided which was worse when submitting, the months-long wait for a reply or the twenty-four hour turn around. *wince* Good luck on the next!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Katherine, I will keep plugging away.
DeleteI've heard that the smaller-sized submissions are moving fast and furious with turn-around times these days. Seems we all (editors too) have so much piled on our plates that we just tear through as fast as we can (You've heard the wisdom that the first five pages are all most editors need to know if they'll buy your novels, and only if the first five sentences are enough to catch their eye... *shudders* a big challenge!)
ReplyDeleteThank you for the shout-out on my sponsor post. And I'm glad it came to you well-timed.
Eden, that is probably true, about turn-around time on shorter submissions. I am over it. Thanks, in great part, to your sponsor post. Best wishes on your own successions.
DeleteWhen I was learning how to become a partnering parent rather than an authoritarian one, something that helped tremendously was this advice:
ReplyDeleteDon't think in terms of bad days. Every day has many moments, and usually there are good ones. Learning to see each moment as having the potential to be better than the last has helped me focus more on the good ones.
may there be an abundance of good ones in the rest of your week, Chris!
So far the rest of the week has continued to be filled with those bad moments. The poison ivy that broke out on my arm has moved to my foot. I didn't know it could do that, but my doctor says that is normal. But if this keeps me off my feet over the weekend, it will give me more time to write, right?
DeleteAh, the writer's life ... the joys and challenges, the highs and lows. Keep pressing on, Chris. Joanna Penn (The Creative Penn) has some good materials on making the switch to becoming a full-time creative. You may want to check out her website and resources.
ReplyDeleteWish I had a better way to say sometimes work is work. They have to pay you to do it, otherwise, we'd all be elsewhere. Maybe. I loved teaching and working with students before I retired, but the meetings? Oh, so much less so. What I liked here is that you let your co-workers know how important writing is to you . . . and that you continue to believe in that writing and your creative self. Hope the weekend brings you healing AND that time to write.
ReplyDelete