no I didn't watch the new movie Spiral. this is about my own spiral. rejection is never fun. but it's even worse when you feel strongly about the stories you've submitted and waited for a month or more and then find out they were all rejected. During that month I had a boost of confidence and felt great about my writing. I was doing rewrites on my novel and loving every word my fingers typed. I imagined one, maybe two of my stories being chosen. There was a site I've been trying to get on that I knew I was going to get because I had a solid story.
But I was wrong.
This combined with six of my other stories being rejected somewhere else and the charge of three hundred bucks for my website caused me to spiral mentally. All the normal questions came flooding back in. What am I doing? Am I a writer? Should I be? What am I striving for? Do I want to be published? Should I just say fuck it and self-publish? What am I even looking for in all this? Isn't it supposed to be the writing itself that makes me happy?
It's no fun. It's like I'm seeking approval via my writing. Waiting for someone to stamp it with acceptance. Then I see other writers who do podcasts and other things, leading me to wonder if I should get back to podcasting as well in conjunction with my writing. But I barely have time to do my writing. And my wife keeps mentioning wanting another kid. I don't get how people do this. I'm sick of wanting to be something I'm not.
And yet, here I am. Still writing. Because what else am I going to do? I was listening to a podcast with J. Cole yesterday and he said something that stuck out to me. That his latest album wasn't about trying to prove to others in the game that he could rap and spit bars. It was about proving it to himself. And maybe that's what I need to focus on. Writing the stories I want because I want to show myself I can do it. It sounds lame as I write it and a little cliche. Oh well.