Cocktail Hour

I want you to accept me or reject me. I don’t like being stared at. I don’t like being the thing you will stoop to if it’s last call and you’re feeling drunk and needy.

I sit with a six-o’clock whiskey. Irish. It’s too hot for the Scotch. Or, rather, I don’t drink scotch on rocks, so the hot is not for Scotch.

Gin was once believed to cure gout. I sometimes believe it cures the insufferability of being trapped inside one’s own body forever. A good friend once stuck that bit of silliness into gin’s Wikipedia page. It lasted a week before someone erased it. I think the erasure was terribly shortsighted.

Hemmingway said he could tell the exact point on the page where Faulkner took his first drink of the day. I paraphrase. But I wonder if Faulkner wrote drunk. That seems preferable to revising drunk.

Jameson, Hendrick’s, Tito’s, Tanqueray, Caol Ila, Bacardi, Milagro, Jack Daniels. Crown Royal. That’s one each of the four whiskey groups, two gins, a vodka, a tequila and a rum. For those keeping score at home. Or considering your cocktail options should you decide to visit.

Accept me and I’ll buy you a drink. Reject me and I’ll pour myself one.

These Things Will Make You Moody

Last night I checked my email late, just because. There, waiting, was rejection number 3,435 from a certain online journal. Hyperbole, of course. But it feels that way and every time they tell me no, I spend a few moments sulking. This time, since it was late, I headed to bed gripped by this ugly mood, only to find my daughter awake in her room and looking terribly sad. She’d had a bad dream or wasn’t feeling well – her articulation of the problem was poor – but I picked her up and carried her to my bed and let her sleep on my shoulder.

Then I thought of this. An essay at Big Other where Amber Sparks admits to feeling undo anxiety because she’s constantly reading on Facebook (and elsewhere) about other writer’s publications/readings/general success. She feels behind; she feels pressured to keep up and write more and be noticed more and achieve more. And I’m lying there with my daughter on my shoulder and I’m feeling sorry for myself for this latest rejection, except now I’m wondering why. The story is good. Many of the pieces I’ve sent to this particular journal have been good. And, frankly, despite their prestige, I really only enjoy half of what they publish and tend to find the other half perfect presentations of the emperor’s new clothes. Why do I keep submitting to a journal with an aesthetic that I think tends towards the incomprehensible for incomprehensibility’s sake, that holds up a certain kind of obfuscation as something grand when it is, in my opinion, mostly something meaningless.

This isn’t an attack on certain styles of writing; aesthetics vary and I know I don't have the most experimental of tastes. But, seriously, why the hell am I submitting to (and getting disappointed by) a journal that is clearly operating at an angle different from my own?

The answer is: it’d be really cool to appear there. I mean, it seems like everyone else gets published there. Shouldn’t I want to be published there? Isn’t it imperative for me to keep up with the writing joneses? See me, see me, I’m a talented and prolific writer!

This is silly. This is unhealthy. We’re not a factory; we’re not measured on output. And the quality of our work doesn’t change based on where it appears. A good story is a good story is a good story. The goal, I think, should be to write those good stories and let the rest work itself out. If it takes a long time to craft that story, then it takes a long time. If it takes fifty rejections to find a home for that story, then it takes fifty rejections.

At least these are the thoughts that came to me last night. With my daughter on my shoulder. The purpose of things and such. The point of it all.

Strange Rejections

"Unfortunately we need to pass on it at the moment."

At the moment? So, maybe later, then?

Seriously, all a rejection needs to say is: "The piece isn't right for us." That's it. Move on. Most of us out here are capable of handling a hard landing.