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2003-10-07 - 8:15 p.m.
It's funny. I submitted the story two months ago with the knowledge that no winner would be announced until November 1. And yet I still find it necessary to check the website, where I submitted the story on line, at least once a week. Sometimes I am unsuprised when checking the MY SUBMISSIONS page to find the IN PROCESS in the status box, unsuprised because I believe, at that time, that my story is at least good enough for consideration even if it doesn't place. But sometimes, like last week, I am totally suprised when my status box still reads IN PROCESS because I am certain that it should say COMPLETE (meaning they have read it and already disqualified it). Suprised because I am certain that I was stupid to send that story in the first place because it is so obviously beginner writing. It amazes me how I can feel so different about my writing day after day. A few weeks ago I was certain that I had what it takes, I was pounding out story after story, beautiful things, things that I thought were extraordinary. And then, a mere week later I am staring at my computer screen calling myself a naive fool for ever believing I was a writer. Tears of desperate sadness falling down my cheeks. I read that story I submitted every time I visit the website. And every time I read it I think something different about it. Last week when I read it I was terribly embarrassed. This week when I read it I was very confident and proud. How can that be? Anyway. I bought a ticket yesterday to go to France for a couple weeks. I did this even though last week I spent $200 on a new muffler and some extension pipe or something for my car. I KNEW that once something breaks on my car something else would break too. Because I can never get away with just one repair. But I went ahead and bought the ticket anyway, even though I am totally poor and have no business doing so. And today on the way home my car just STOPPED. It just quit working. So I had to walk the rest of the way home, being stopped by a train at the very tracks that poor kid was killed at a couple weeks ago, me just standing there thinking about how I was standing just a couple feet away from where someone had a train driven through them...trying to get a tow truck to get my car that I left haphazardly strewn in the road. And now it is sitting at the shop, waiting for tomorrow morning for someone to look at it and tell me it is going to cost way more money than I have to fix. Life is so messed up. It's a good thing I have things to look forward to because there is a very real possibility that if I didn't I would be hanging myself right now. Really. |
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