Getting it Out There

An orgy of submitting to competitions and magazines can make a writer feel alive. It almost feels like being drunk. Over time this can be deflated at regular intervals by the inevitable failures. Some might be accompanied by a helpful note from an empathetic editor. Those don't feel so much like rejections, especially if they request to see more work. But the curt ones are a bugger, especially one I had recently that said: 'We will not be taking your work.' It was a standard reply but considering that this was a magazine meant to value the richness of language, they should have thought about that as a grumpy and poorly worded response.

Still, I send with optimism. Past successes at least give me confidence.

So even though emails can be dreaded - if they are rejections - I never stop loving email as a superb writer's companion. In the last few weeks I have contacted The Society of Authors to nitpick over some aspects of a contract and another legal department of a newspaper to check if I could reuse (i.e submit for publication) a previously published story that won a prize in their competition. The Society of Authors, as always, gave very good advice. The newspaper lawyers were churlish enough to say: "Well we can't stop you republishing the story." That was big of them.

Yesterday I wrote with a baby wren on my windowsill, exhausted by the new skills of flight. He was one of eight - two nests in total - who came out and chattered in the trees. It's a simple thing to watch but when the intensity of writing becomes a little tiring, just like learning to fly, it revitalises me.

So onward, to hone up a story for yet another competition.

To be hopeful, always.