I know you're thinking -- who the f*&k is she not to entertain us with her blog for the last six months? It's true that I'm a lousy pusher. I am not skilled at getting people addicted to the things I do. I lack consistency and this is part of what my latest rejection letter -- the one I seem to have passive aggressively misplaced -- said. With a snotty sigh, it admitted that a number of my stories demonstrate real literary talent, but the remainder are highly inconsistent, and in fact many of the stories seem to be -- this is the word they used -- throwaways. Looks like it's back to the dead letter office for me.

When I received this bit of rejection, I had just returned from a date with a dud professor, who I will call -- for the sake of anonymity -- a literary critic. The "critic" found the letter to be downright positive (duh, she's a critic -- she can dish it and dish it) and waxed all pomo about how I just needed to fix the manuscript. I don't know about you, but I think throwaway connotes something unfixable.

Some days I fantasize about how liberating it would be to throw away words completely. Another writer I know just did it. She broke up with her writing. Her friend said, "I support your fuck it!" and she's getting other "you go, girl" support from her social network. Meanwhile, I'm hunched at home over a dim page and a codependent relationship with a poetic phrase I scrawled at 4 am, someting not even worth a bad country song, and I am trying with my tricky heart to love it like a bad marriage.