365 days of being a writer: day 190

Highway 1-90who knows.

That's a line from a long terrible poem that I wrote in high school.

I'm still banging away at this literary essay: up to a finished page three draft, and I will get a few more done before bed. But first: I just got all worked up over the equivalent of a forum thread and needed a breather.

Someone over on one of the MFA outlets made what I perceived to be an admonishing remark about how we should have more fun with this process, since we elected to participate in it and cut it with the "funny... nervous antics." There were smileys and extra exclamation points, which I'll admit, I find patronizing, especially when they accompany admonishments.

But it made me think about when I was here and here and here --this is where so many of the hopeful group sound like they are right now. And to hear [read] someone brush those feelings off as funny really pushed a button. It doesn't matter if you ELECT to join the fishies all trying to climb the ladder to spawn best sellers. It's still fucking hard. And if it's not a struggle, well then, you're doing it wrong.

Is the problem of graduate school acceptance a first-world problem--YES SIR. But does that make the gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, nerve-wracking process any less valid? Nope. People are judging your art, and all evidence points to the fact that they are finding it unworthy. It's not like someone returned the watermelon you sold them because it "wasn't sweet enough" or the passenger on the bus thought you were driving like a dick. Art comes from deep down. It's like someone saying your own kids are no good.

Now, that's not what they are saying.

That's not what a rejection from Brown or Iowa means. Not at all. I know that to be true with my BRAIN, but until I got that call from TTU, my MIND refused to believe. You stick your neck out as far as it will go with these applications, and then you wait, and swallow carefully, for months. The fretting and crying and wallowing aren't pointless or dumb, they're to be expected, just as nervous laughter, short tempers, and day drinking are.
/rant

Back to writing.