***
For a while, the fiction bug got me again, and I was sure that I was done with poetry. However, though I am fussing with a couple of stories, poetry has once again ensnared me. At least, until the next round of rejections.
I'm still enamored of fiction, though. I love stories, and it's nice to just stretch out and write prose. The trouble is that I'm averse to drama and conflict, which is a drawback when attempting to write fiction.
***
I'm finally sending out the snail-mail component of my Big Fall Submission. I've got a number of online submissions out there already. All together, I will have about two dozen different poems out at a total of about two dozen different places. At least I feel like I'm actually doing something when I send them out.
***
I used to save my rejection slips. Now they just go in the trash immediately.
***
Maybe I will not give up on the PhD plan, after all. Running my mouth off about Emerson and Melville and Whitman, in addition to creative writing and poetry in general, would not be a bad career.
Though I feel embarrassed asking for another set of recommendation letters.
***
I finally had the nerve to get ahold of the student evaluations from the creative writing class I taught two years ago. I liked teaching that class, and I didn't want to ruin my memory of it by reading the students' comments!
The results are mixed: Overall, the responses were more favorable than I expected (though not as favorable as I would like). But I discovered that, as it turns out, my favorite student evidently didn't like me very much. Oh, well. She's wrong; that was a good class.
(Note to any students--not just of mine, but in general--who might happen to read this: Your teachers can recognize your handwriting--even after two years!)
***
I've got ideas for my next manuscript of poems and for my poetry-writing style overall, as well as two short stories and a graphic novel in progress, in addition to an idea for a good academic essay that might help with the next round of PhD windmill tilting, and the beginning of a book about creative writing as spiritual practice.
But on the other hand, I'm completely broke, unemployed with no prospects, and deeply in debt. I might never recover financially from this past summer and its legacy. So life could go either way at this point.
***
I haven't done shit to help the Obama campaign, though I've gotten lots of e-mails about the need for volunteers. I feel bad, but I just can't believe that making phone calls and knocking on doors can really sway anybody. At any rate, when it comes right down to it, I can't respect these "undecided" voters. How can you not know which side you're on? I don't think I could veil my contempt for these people long enough to talk to them.
***
I know what I want to do in life, but between that and where I am now, there's an enormous dark chasm of financial woe, and I just don't know how to make it over it, and sometimes I just don't think it's worth it.
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