Having What It Takes
This morning, first thing, searched for a literary blogger mentioned in a Poets & Writers article this month. As is so often the case with the Web, one click leads to another and another and pretty soon I'm at Poetry Snark and Foetry reading of all the bad poetry being published and the nepotism in poetry contests and, just like that, my writing balloon bursts and becomes a shriveled mass of rubber in wrinkles on the floor. Who am I kidding?
Something isn't right, is off, with this trying to be part of the writing profession, the writing life. Because why? I'm too old to play the game? Too uninterested and turned off by the academy and its inbred B.S.? Been there, done that even on the administrative side at Cornell; it's been a welcome forgetting of all the back scratching that goes on under the guise of collegiality and academic freedom in those less-than-hallowed halls.
Oh yeah, I have the blogs but don't tell anyone about them. I'm working on the web site but to market what? my scribbling to myself? Days like this I'm not sure what I expected, what I expect. It's a grind, the market for creative work is shrinking, and I may be past my ability to suck up and play the who-you-know game. It would be far better to be in denial, slogging away, thinking that some day I'll get around the writing, someone will recognize my gifts, magically, mysteriously, my work will find its way out there, be published. But I stopped drinking that Kool-Aid a while back so, unfortunately, those delusions are long gone.
I should simply go to the work -- I say that's what I want to do, how I want to operate. How to balance -- finding voices in a community outside you with being too isolated? I wonder: is the answer to find real people (as opposed to virtual, typed words on a screen) to hang out with?
