Sunday, April 27, 2008
:epiphany:
Back! A lovely week, and I have photos to share but need to unpack, do laundry and errr...find the camera.
A nice thing about staying with my parents, is that I sleep in a wee cabin-thing that is on the front of their property and my Dad - who has always been an early riser - does breakfast detail with the boys so, while I can no longer sleep in due to eight years of enforced 6am wake ups, I do get to loll about in bed and make myself tea and read and read and read until about 9am.
I read a lot (five books in six days!), wrote a bit, and most importantly THOUGHT a lot. I even had a couple of epiphanies. (Epiphany is one of my favourite words and I probably over-use it, but anyway...)
This year, due to a number of different things happening (some good, like big pep talks from valued friends, and some sad, like the death of a friend) I have started to take myself seriously as a writer in a way I haven’t let myself before. Now that Magnus is in kindy three days a week - I have the head space and the time to work on my writing. I am treating it more like the job it has to become if you want to be serious about it. I am also working on my continued reluctance to put myself forward, promote myself etc. I am sending lots of work out. Lots. I am writing a little every day.
One of the books I read while I was away was the life story of Dodie Smith. She wrote at the end of her life about how when she looked back she could see the times when the “traitor inside” her caused her to make the wrong choices. I can relate to that idea of the “traitor inside” - I guess it’s another way of phrasing the notion of self-sabotage. I think there has been a lot of that in my life. In fact, one friend told me recently that “whenever something starts to happen for you, to go well, when you start to get positive attention for it - you drop it. You run away.” Hard to hear at the time, but I see that it’s true. And I don’t want to be like that any more. (It may not sound like much of a mind switch, but like most life-changing inner work it is both huge to me and impossible to convey adequately to you.)
Anyway, thanks Dad, for the space to reflect and to read and to lie staring at the ceiling making resolutions about How My Life Should Be.
I got home last night to one acceptance of three poems from a respected online magazine, and one rejection letter from a respected literary magazine. But the rejection letter was not just the ‘Dear Blank’ form letter I had received from that magazine previously, but a handscrawled, ENCOURAGING letter that ended: “Please do try me again in the future”. Any writers out there will appreciate how this is the best rejection letter you can get (yes, there ARE good and bad rejection letters.)
I’m smiling. I’m only a couple of months in to this ‘taking myself seriously’ thing and I’m starting to see results. To be honest, I’m terrified - but I’m not going to let the terror win this time.
