Thursday, October 19, 2017

the exhausted me i've come to know


isn't this a great photo? It reminds me of the old days of blogging before I discovered photoshop, before my photos were even lit well. It also makes me happy because there are hardly any photos at all of me just being with my kids like this. Almost all the photos where I am included are very, 'here we are with our arms around each other' which is nice, but not as emotional as this, which is a story. it's the story of me having a bad autoimmune flare and taking a hot bath with magnesium salts to try to quell the horrible pain and swelling in my abdomen, and Ever not wanting to be away from me, and me saying 'Well OK then, sit on the edge of the bath and play toys while I read this magazine,' and me reading the magazine but also fussing at her about splashing and noises and then looking up at her and just thinking, If I loved you anymore, I'd be a supernova, and not a human being.

It's a very unflattering photo of me, not the way I like to present myself to the world, which somehow makes me like it even more. My arms look fleshy because they are pressed into my boobs so you can't see the nipple, and my stomach rolls are a'rollin, and I have massive eye bags. But I recognize myself. I look like the exhausted me that I have come to know in my late thirties and early forties.

I'm stepping back from Facebook as much as possible and I hope to be blogging more because there is something about writing here that is very good for my brain and emotions that nothing else has duplicated.

Hello, hello blog readers, I know you are there, though you are silent. I see your little clicks. 

I have submitted my novel to three agents. Two of them requested it on exclusive after my query, and one of those two was my dream agent. All rejected it and all for the same reasons: plot issues. The feedback other than that was amazing. It made me feel like a true novelist, though I haven't had a novel published y.e.t. The dream agent said, hey, if you can't sell this to an agent, and write or have another novel, send that to me- which is unusual and encouraging. My plot isn't steadily propulsive. So people say 'that's silly, don't stop after three rejections.' However the issue isn't my precious feelings, it's that I know the reasons it was rejected are RIGHT, I can feel it when I read it, but I can't see it. I can't figure out how to fix it. I need a developmental editor, I absolutely 100% do. Reader feedback didn't do it for this.

That's where I'm at with that.


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