As I sit here in my sweatpants eating buttery popcorn, drinking a Diet Coke and watching The Golden Girls, obviously in full no-apology depression mode, this quote from Rose made me laugh out loud.
I did not get into the Mentor Series. Neither did Jodi. Polly broke the news to us, ending the week long vigil of sitting on my cell phone waiting for Jerod to call. I don't know about honorable mention, finalist, any of that, I just know I'm not one of the four chosen.
Rob did his best to take our minds off of it after classes ended tonight. At Grumpy's he hung out with his class and then when they all took off (rookies!) he joined Jodi, Polly and me.
I guess I'm a little mixed about not getting in. Is it a big deal? Is it totally arbitrary? Both? Should I use it as a measure of my writing? (I guess only if I get in, yeah?) I have a real problem with the idea that if you get published or win an award, then it means you're good, but if you don't publish/win then it's because it's all so subjective. Where I come from, which is where most of you come from, if you won it meant you were good, and if you lost it meant you weren't as good as the winners. To change the parameters based on winning or losing seems to make the whole process all so much crap.
The conclusion of poetry class tonight, my having a total Knox Overstreet moment in class (yeah, I read a love poem, yeah, the person I was crushing on was in the room when I read it. Carpe Diem, man.), and the results of mentor have left me all more confused than anything else. I don't know where my writing should go from here. I've blown my writing wide open this summer, pushing the novel, the poetry, and my fiction to new levels, and now I'm staring at a big mess of pieces and I don't quite know how they will (or can) fit back together again. This is not necessarily a bad thing, it's just a confusing thing.
I'm going to continue in poetry for awhile...I like it. Fiction and I are on a break at the moment.
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