Oh dear. Long time no post. Well, that's the life of a writer. Anyone whose posting every five minutes can't be writing, now can they? Have been working arduously (oooh, nice word) on my novel. I truly think I'll be done by July, at which time I'll start the major re-writes. Frankly, I'm looking forward to the rewrites. Rewrites are a whole different species than first and second drafts. By the time re-writes come along you've got your story. None of that meandering plot stuff. You know these charachters, you've lived with them, they've sat at your table and kicked you for thinking what you do about them. By the time the re-writes come along it's by no means easy but it's more meat and potatoes and you're onto something, something substantial -- no longer ideas but a real live story. The good stuff.

Anyway, aside from that I completed another short story, hoping to find a home for it. Rejection letters mean nothing to me now. They come in the mail, I file them in my journal marked "For the Tonight Show" when I am one day sitting across from Jay Leno and can boast about how many rejections I received but how much I believed in myself and kept writing because I knew the day would come that I'd get an advance large enough to purchase my dream home in Marina del Rey. That's what rejecction letters mean to me: NOTHING! Back when I was a virgin I cried like a baby when the first one came in. It meant that I was a piss poor writer who should go back to school and get an MBA. The second came, then the third and then I was no longer a virgin. I was published but then other rejections came from other pieces and though it was a shi**y feeling I learned to look at it as just a person somewhere off in the land of editors who has an opinion. Not a reflection of me. And if I've learned a thing a-tall in this business it's this: writing takes tough skin, persistence, belief in one's self, a love for storytelling, and most importantly the understanding that publishing is a business and it is a fickle one at that. Never ever ever ever let 'em see you sweat. And if you quit it's because you never really wanted it in the first place.

I'm out.