return of the minion

I’m back from my NY excursion. There was a lot of drinking and eating involved, visiting friends, and considerable shopping. Book stores, and DVD shoppes, and restaurants, oh my! My credit cards are slightly warm to the touch now.

I’m struggling with jet lag, but I’m doing quite well at the moment. I attended a party last night, so that forced me to keep awake and active.

I received a rejection, before the celebration, from one of the clutch of markets to which I sent work in November. What can you do? Except shrug your shoulders, and decide if it requires reworking before sending it on to another market, or if it should be pegged as a “useful, but failed, experiment.”

Last night I had a particularly vivid nightmare, which involved people I know and respect telling me in rather blunt terms that my writing was terrible, and I’d better get my shit together or get out of the business. I was glad to wake up.

Self-doubt is part of the package when you embark on a creative career. Yet, I continue to write. Like other people, I think I have something worth saying, and I want others to read it. Even though part of me cobbled together the horrendous scenario of being marked as a self-deluded and talentless hack for my night-time entertainment, I chose to dismiss it as the product of my fears and insecurities, and settle back to writing.

One thing is true: I need to write. Vacation is lovely, but there’s a hell of a lot of work to do now. I’m expecting visitors tomorrow, however, so it will be 2005 before I can tackle any of my numerous projects.