Writing and being rejected

Again it's been ages since I posted here - I've gone from being a regular blogger to a sometimes one and the only excuse I have is that I've been writing so much more elsewhere.

I've been trying to be very disciplined with myself and to follow the Stephen King advice of writing at least 1,000 to 2,000 words each day.

That worked for at least two weeks. I was very proud of myself.

My problem seems to be that life just gets in the way - kids to take to and from school and other places, parents who need dropping off at airports and hospital appointments, friends who have to be kept up with, animals needing vets, cupboards needing filling, wardrobes lacking shoes....

Try and keep writing through all of that!

But of course I do because that is what I do. It tends to be a bit haphazard and some days I get a few hundred words down and other days I don't. I do need to write more but haven't we all got things that we really need to get done?

I read on a website the other day about the idea of setting yourself a specific target within a particular time frame - nothing exactly earth-shattering in this, but it did resonate with me.

And it's no good whining on about not having as much in print as you'd like if you don't actually submit stuff to editors - no one knows you're there unless you tell them.

And what's the worst they can say?

Email is a fabulous invention - I can send off half a dozen poems and I never have to see or speak to anyone about it. When I receive my rejection emails I can weep silently into my coffee without anyone knowing the reason why.

At least they're sending out rejection emails now, I used to just be ignored so I guess I must be doing something right somewhere along the line.


And even including this particular image of writing says so much about my idea of Good Writing and the value I put upon it. It gives away my intentions and expectations for my own writing but most of all it shows how terribly romantic I am about writing.

The other day I was talking about Salman Rushdie's latest novel, The Enchantress of Florence and I was saying how much this was my type of book because it reminds me of my earliest reading memories. I remember being taken to the library in my village and chosing a large cloth bound book of fairy tales. There were three that I can recall, one orange, one red and one yellow. Each contained stories from Grimms, Andersen or the Arabian Nights I think. I know now that these were the famous colour collections from Andrew Lang and in fact I managed to find an image of one of them - I found this on an auction house's site, the book is valued at around £50-£75 and dates from the 1920s - it's the same sort that I read as a child in the late 70s. It seemed old and smelled old even back then but that added to the precious nature of it. Thick yellowing pages and the smell of old wood and mushrooms.



And that's what keeps me reading and writing - I love returning to the world that was contained within those colourful books.