Four Weeks vs Nine Months

The strange dichotomy in Pickled Land continues.

I haven't blogged much lately because there is simply no news to share.

It's four weeks to the day (!) that I leave for Los Angeles, and prep for Clarion is pretty much sorted, all that boring behind the scenes stuff. Flights booked, paperwork done, fees and monetary requirements sorted, bag mentally packed, Disneyland anticipated. I've done a reading regimen of the tutors work, and I'm currently only reading short stories to get my mind in the right head space. I'm not trying to super analyse anything, just reading randomly across many venues and anthologies of current work, and trying to read as diversely as possible.

As far as writing work goes, I've been picking away slowly at things, but despite the HUGE ego boost getting accepted to Clarion has provided, there's an inverse effect happening at the same time where my ego has taken a huge hit...because I haven't made a new sale in nine months. I'm not kidding. It's just been rejection after rejection since August last year, with only a couple of releases, and considering the momentum I had in 2013, I have to admit it feels pretty terrible. I'm sitting on a couple of "hopefuls" (still waiting to hear back, or in second step of a process), and I keep getting really good rejections, but I'm still teetering on that ledge of almost but not quite.

*falls to knees* What am I doing wrooo-ooo-oooong? Why does nobody love mee-eeee-eee? *sob*

If I didn't have the huge anticipation of Clarion to keep me afloat, I think I'd be pretty upset by now. I went the first ten months of 2010 (my first year of seriously trying to get published) without a sale, and I was feeling the mortal coil then. So right now, my days are this weird cat-on-buttered-toast flip of yay!boo. It is affecting my work. I've started many stories, and I'm not truly happy with any of them, because they have to be better than last year's work. I'm just not feeling it. It's incredibly frustrating. I know I can be better. Where is that click?

It also hasn't helped that the last six weeks I've been dealing with a complication from my operation in February. It has been dealt with (I had to have another minor emergency operation), and I'm healing up fine, but I've spent at least a good month worried that the problem could go to the extreme of the complication (full omg life changing surgery), and it would stop me from travelling overseas. That stress has curbed my attention span and affected my writing output too. I've been trying really hard, but there have been days I've skipped writing, and it's put me backwards in output.

I also haven't blogged about industry things,  because I've been saving all my energy and teaspoons for my writing the last six months. Maybe this will change once I'm fully 100% and Clarion has reinvigorated my writing bones.

Hopefully I'll have some great news to share soon.

We can't stop here. This is bat country.