Rejection Dejection

Life is wild. One minute, you think everything is going to be fine and dandy and then the next someone rips the rug out from underneath you and you are flat on your back again. That has happened to me a couple of times in the past few days, but I’m only here to talk about the one instance.

After a long wait, I finally heard back from Ghost City Press regarding my mini chap, Me and Jesus on a Tuesday Afternoon. They very respectfully said thank you, but no, thank you. I spent a few moments being very sad, and then a few more moments not being surprised at all. The problem with this piece is that it is too long to be a single poem, but it is also far too short to be a book of any kind. So, it is very hard to find it a home, and I was up against a LOT of folks. I was very hopeful with Ghost City Press after a long wait and much confusion with my previous editor. Alas, I will have to figure out what to do with it next.

I haven’t felt rejection in a while, mostly because I handle it pretty well when it comes my way, so I was a little blindsided by the feelings of sadness that came with this particular rejection. Usually, I am fine with someone not accepting my work, but this one hurts somehow more than expected. I know it is because of the piece itself, which is a favorite of everyone who has read it but is not really publishable for some reason. I could publish it myself, but that would be a total kick in the bank account. It is small, and I could never charge more than $5 for it, so I would never make back the cost of the ISBN. It will have to wait until I have the ability to create such a labor of love.

Or, and this is another idea I have been toying with, I will make a full collection, eventually. I can always put my little tale of me and Jesus getting stoned on a Tuesday afternoon into a collection.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. Honestly, I don’t know what I’m going to do with a lot of things. My tarot cards saying that big changes are on the horizon, and I sure hope that is true, because right now I am getting pretty sick and tired of having that rug ripped out from underneath me.

I guess the best I can say is that this is the first blog in 2 weeks that I have written that hasn’t been about crippling writer’s block, so at least something’s going right.