Rejections and coping

Or trying to. And, books that remind us why we read.

My short story rejection count went up by three last week. My novel exists but she seems to be living away from me, like a lost sister, far, far away. My short stories sit like droplets of coloured tears, each a compound emotion.

Uncle Melancholy keeps me company as my (many) writerly worries nip at my ankles.

Auntie Apple is, quite often, annoying.

I have a hibiscus plant whose leaves curl and wrinkle into unnatural shapes. Black ants walk up their stems. They make nests of white inside the mud along the plant’s roots, clinging to them and choking away nutrients slowly. I did not know ants made nests this way, but TIL.

…

Dear reader, does sadness stick to the underside of your eyelids as well? A blurred-lens that defocuses everything but keeps the melancholic in relief?

Elizabeth Strout writes this beautiful paragraph:

And as I put the page down, my playlist switches songs.

Karen Dalton croons ‘Goodbye, oh my old sweethearts and pals / I’m goin' away, I may come back to see you, darling / Some old rainy rainy day’.