Monday, June 28, 2010

Slacking Off

This weekend a friend asked what was the deal with my lack of blogging. It's been a few weeks since my last post and the previous posts have been spread out much more than usual. My sister, who heard my friend's comment, immediately suggested that I've been too well occupied with other things to be blogging. It's true I've been happily occupied elsewhere but I don't think it'd be right to place the blame on my new and wonderful boyfriend. At least, not all the blame. Even before things got started with him my blogging pace had flagged. That's just a symptom of something more, I think, because all my writing has flagged.

Each time I try to sit down to work on The Mercy Hour I am unable to do so. Distraction, discouragment, uncertainty... I'm not in best writing form right now. I'm hoping and praying I'll be able to shake it - whatever 'it' is. The thorough and harsh critique I received recently from an editor on my submission of Full of Days might have something to do with it... or a lot to do with it. Rejection after rejection has come and it's been easy to keep up my determined and positive spirit. This was the first one though that included a critique instead of the prewritten rejection response that is sent by most publishers. Criticism can be a really good thing and it's a necessary thing for a writer, at least, for any writer who wants to continually improve. This criticism amounted to (and no, I'm not imagining this implication, it's there in the email) the editor being of the opinion that Full of Days is unpublishable. I'm not going to pretend that I'm having an easy time dealing with that. So far my dealing has been in the form of avoidance. Eventually I will switch to perservance and put in the work necessary to improve the novel to point of being publishable in the eyes of the right publishing company. Just give me some time to get there, friends.

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