All in a Day's Work
I decided to hunker down and send work out this morning. The current issue of Poets and Writers has quite the laundry list of contests—seems the fall is a big time for such literary events. So I've spent the better part of the past four hours sifting through my work and bundling what I hope is good-enough stuff —along with the required reading fees—into manila envelopes, figuring out the postage that will get them where they are going, first class.
As often happens after I have done this, I feel absolutely enervated by the experience. Full of doubt about my seriousness, the quality of my work. Disgusted that the world of contests and competition has to be the way the world of literature and getting published works in this 21st century US. Drained by the thought of all those submissions out there, the piles of paper, the reading eyes of strangers going through them, the first cuts, and then—in who knows what decision-making process—finalist selections to be made. So many voices, so many people writing, increasingly few people reading: I know I have to stop when I start thinking like that.
