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All content copyright 2010 by Chelsea Biondolillo. Seriously.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

365 days of being a writer: day 139

I was ready to throw in the towel today. Call uncle. It's not that I was going to stop writing, it's just that it is becoming increasingly difficult to say that I am a writer.

Surely it's a mid-winter (in the non-winter desert) funk that's grabbed hold, but I've just felt like a reality avoider lately. I'm not a writer, I'm a grocery store clerk with delusions of grandeur. I write sometimes, but so does my dad (he was recently published, he mentioned in the last message he left), so do all those folks who get jokes printed in Reader's Digest. They are as much a writer as me at this point.

But that's no way to start off the New Year. I am committed to trying harder to be positive, or at least less-negative. Starting today off with a rejection (wherein the publisher didn't even bother to send a note, just checked a box on submishmash) didn't help. As an aside, how shitty is that?

Anyway, the day improved when an editor responded to a piece that I had submitted to an online journal back in late August. She's an editor I respect, and in her note she said, "I love love love this piece and want to publish it!" Talk about a comeback. Just like that: the day is saved from the pit of despair. There will be a link once she posts it.

I also dropped a line to the potential job contact and submitted another mini flash to 52|250 A Year of Flash. And used a Barnes & Noble gift card to subscribe to Poets&Writers magazine. The day was not a loss at all.

Why didn't I work on my Night essay, though? What am I so afraid of?

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