Today is just not that day.

I'm in a crap mood today.  I've started this blog post over three times trying to avoid writing that sentence, but there it is.  Pithily stated. I'm in a crap mood.  I've sent the book out to five agents -- I know -- hardly a huge number.  But I've had one "we're not accepting unsolicited submissions"; one "no, thank you"; one "not this one, but maybe if you send us something else"; and two that I'm still waiting to hear on.  I know, I know, the publishing business is brutal, MMA, UFC brutal.  I get that.  That doesn't mean that I am immune to the sharp sting of rejection.  I am not.  In fact, today, for some reason, maybe lack of sleep, the foster dog that needs a home badly, or the cold weather that announced it barbaric presence with authority this morning (Sorry Walt), I am feeling it just a little more sharply than usual.

I admit that there is a part of me that is shaking her head and mumbling, "why, with your sensitivity to rejection, are you putting yourself out there like this?"  Because I have to do this.  For as long as I can remember, I have walked around, sometimes questioning my own sanity, because I have narration running through my head.  Have you seen the movie The Holiday with Cameron Diaz, where the movie trailer voiceover narrates her life in her head?  Kind of the same concept, except it's narration and dialogue.  Fully formed characters are crawling out of my thoughts.  It's like Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and a really good version of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, said, "If you don't have to write, then you shouldn't be writing."  I have to write.

I've done so many other things in my life and never mastered any of them because writing has always been sho shin for me.  Sho shin is a Japanese concept that translates to "original intention".  Sho shin is what you were meant to do, what you were meant to be in the world.  If you are not fulfilling your sho shin, then the world is not right.  So, I have to do this. My world is not right if I don't.  I know that sounds dramatic, but would you say that if thirty years ago I had said I had to be a doctor so I could heal sick people and that my world would not be right if I didn't?  Probably not.  You would have said that's beautiful, more power to you, go cure cancer.  So writing is what I have to do, and I'm not apologizing or suppressing it any longer.

But, so just like everyone else, regardless of their sho shin, there are good days and meh days.  Today is a meh day.  Today I might need to let the frustration out by crying a little, or eating something I really shouldn't, like a bag of peanut M&Ms.  Tomorrow might be a better day and I may just send out five more queries, one of which might get accepted, or not.  But again, as Joss Whedon says, if you can find something that you love, then you do it. If you can’t, it doesn’t matter how skillful you are [at something else] : that’s called whoring.”