Rejection Bubbles

When the email drops into your box from the fiction ed's secretary, you know it's rejection before you even open it. At least they have answered and given you a brief reason; I appreciate their time. But they still said no, and darn it, it was a good story.
When you look for other homes for the good story, you realise how few there are - how many magazines are no longer running fiction. This means we are all chasing the same shrunken market and you have to raise your game more and more to get the sales. You have to write your absolute best each time, each word; you have to have the sheer energy of conviction and resolution, of pleasure and drive. You cannot do this half-heartedly, or anxiously, or full of self-doubt. It isn't just self-belief, either, but a connection with the world around you that drives good writing, interest and joy in the people and events that occur daily. It is the quirky and fresh view.
But today I was tired and there have been too many rejections lately. So today I tidied. If in doubt, I always tidy. There are times when it isn't procrastination but necessary displacement and a use for frustrated energy. Tomorrow I can go back to writing when the rejection becomes another in the pile and I can pick myself up. At least I'll have a very tidy chest of drawers when I start to write again and maybe something will have bubbled up in the space I left in my mind today.

Three things

Three things I missed yesterday:
- a phone call; a parcel; a chat with a neigbour
Three things I saw yesterday:
- heaped up clouds full of sun; a moon by daylight; a dress with a geometric print
Three things I felt yesterday:
- contentment; laughter; pain
Three things I did yesterday:
- clean; cover books in sticky back plastic; write.

Standing on the Edge of the Pool

So do you walk in slowly, letting the water lap up slowly round you, shivering as it slops higher than you expected? Why is your waist colder than your legs? Or do you go for it, diving into the water and coming up cold, engulfed by salt, hair in your eyes, laughing and gasping and abandoned to physical sensation?
Do you clean your kitchen windows, reorganise your cupboard to fit in the new frying pans, repot the spider plants, look at the clock? Or do you sit at your computer and open the pages that can engulf you in their ideas?

Muse in the Long Grass

The muse is out there. It's been in the long grass all summer, snoozing while the weeds grew up around it and the red ants tunnelled past it.
The muse is such a delicate, fussy little creature. Maybe it needs a good talking to, rather than all this gentle handling. It seems there are many things it doesn't like: children's games, sewing, noise, clutter, sunshine, sand, washing up, dust, letters from the bank, pale faces, unmade beds, potato blight, wrapping paper.
It needs to toughen up. It's September now. New school year and the muse needs a timetable.