A Writer's Notebook, Day Six-Hundred-And-Thirty-Eight

It is not always easy to get through my work each day, a feeling that can be exacerbated by the steady arrival of rejections that continue to appear in my email.  I am aware of the odds any writer faces, but, until my first acceptances do arrive, it still feels as if it is a monolith.  I am not getting feedback beyond the rejections, though I have others who I trust who are supportive of my work.  I do not think that those individuals, other poets I have had the chance to work or study with, have been misleading me by expressing enthusiasm for my work, telling me, for many years, that I should be submitting more of my work to journals.  At the same time, my poetry is not getting accepted yet.  The question becomes what actions I can take to improve this situation.  I work daily on my writing, and I am sending out much of the work right now, but it is not achieving results.  To keep going doing this feels idiotic and inane.  I am certain this is all stuff I have expressed before, because it is how I have felt for a long while now.  I have asked for help, if course, but the only answer is to just keep doing what I am doing, as if I am not asking what to do when that is not working.  I feel trapped, if I am honest.  I have written a great deal, and to have that much work without any real prospects scares me.  It feels a bit like it must be a form of madness to write this much that is not valued.  But if I began to find some small degree of success, it would alter that perspective.  I do not mean that getting rejections will stop bothering me after receiving a single acceptance, but I would feel that I was making progress, that even if it was hard and slow, I was not facing a monolith.

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