not right

Man it's been Rejection City around here. I'm over it.
Seven in the past month. 7!
That is not right.
Not right. At all.
*
Funny how that phrase flexes to do a lot of work:
The way he treats her, it's not right.
That kid is not right in the head.
Sorry, not right now.
Thanks, but your piece is not right for us. 
*
Anyway all this rejection is incorrect. It dejects me. It makes me try harder. It gives me sleepless nights.
I awoke the other night for quite awhile, thought about this story I'm working on. What is it about? What are my characters trying to do? I had a realization: the thread of the story. I've been yawning all day but now I'm ready to write, to apply my insomniac insight and see what happens.

push it

I stopped reading last year, gave up on books and the news and Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. Other than the occasional Real Change or spy novel re-run, I pretty much dumped the written word. At some point though I ran across xTx's blog Nothing to Say. She writes like a person punching you in the mouth, and then kissing you. It hurts like hell and then it's amazing. I inhaled her and then I forgot about her until today, and yeah she's still writing like a Fight Club extra.

Try this on from the one where i unexpectedly cry while writing it and then know i hit a part of my truth and it hurts: "My heart constantly yearns for other things. Things I cannot have. I think that’s what continually drives my writing. With my writing I can put that yearning somewhere. I can put all of my stomache aches and my cryings and my what if’s into the imaginary. I can also, in some cases, make people like me. I can sometimes make them love me. I make them all my father."

No means I'm alive

A lot of no's in 2011 so far.
At least a dozen cold shoulders from literary journals and magazines.
Dear writer: thanks but no thanks, try us another time.
I don't take it personally.
Which isn't to say I like hearing it.
I hate no.
I have to remember that no means, not this time. Not yet. Keep trying.
*
The other no's--one from a boy I fell for last year, plus a sweet new one who's strictly off limits--those no's smart deeper and longer. Some no's you don't recover from so fast. If at all.