A Writer's Notebook, Day Seven-Hundred-And-Thirty-Nine

 I have been in a very negative place, as anyone who reads this blog regularly would likely know, and I need to change things.  I have no idea what to do, but it is untenable for me to continue as I have been.  I do not have any answers, but I recognize my situation and that I need to alter it, and would be glad to have help in that regard. I don't know how to change any of it, and I am not open at all to any kind of acceptance, to be honest.  Accepting my situation makes me feel worse, as it makes me feel that I am in a hopeless situation that will not get better.  I am not defending that perspective, but I can't see any way to think of my current situation as anything but a failure, and to accept that would mean allowing myself to be defeated by this, and to basically give up on my writing, to accept that I have wasted all my time and effort and that I was misled into believing I had any talent in the first place.  I am not saying this is a valid or healthy perspective, but it is how I feel, and in that context, it becomes impossible for me to see acceptance as anything positive.  I can't imagine my attitude changing if I am just continuing on as I have been, sending out work and waiting to see what happens, when it feels as if that is a pointless effort and I have no way of judging progress.  To pretend I am doing anything but wasting my effort by sending out has already begun to feel delusional, and all the evidence I have says I am correct about this.  I need to find a way to get out of this situation, and the only ways I can even imagine this changing require altering the circumstances, and even the suggestion that I should find a way to accept this circumstance has become, itself, upsetting and insulting, as if it is an invalidation of my feeling that the situation itself is wrong.  I do not mean this in a sense of entitlement, though I can imagine how it comes across that way, but rather in the context of my own path to this moment.  As I have said before, I didn't become a poet out of nowhere, but was put on this path by a variety of mentors.  I had a number of teachers who were extremely influential on me and who led me to believe I had a special talent that I needed to pursue.  Beyond this, I was given explicit assurance of help from some, and implications of support for my work from others.  The decision I made to pursue poetry as a profession was not one I made without considering the realities, but I had been taught that my work was good, and convinced that I would be able to succeed.  Yet, now, I find I cannot get anything published, and I have none of the support or help I was offered.  Indeed, I have only been told to just keep sending work out, that my writing is good and is bound to be published, but it is not.  

In a practical sense, the only real definition for the quality of a piece of writing has to be in terms of the reception it receives, and, though I know many writers have difficulty publishing work that later is seen as genius, it is also hard for me to judge my own work without recognizing the reality of what it means that I am not finding any success with it.  I have to believe that the response is to the work, and that their is some aspect of it I should be working on in order to do better, but editors do not offer comments on rejections, and those I do receive critique from are not able to suggest what is wrong.  In many cases, I've had others express surprise at the difficulty.  This leaves me trapped, because I only have the ability to control my work, but I cannot do so without some idea of what I am attempting to work towards.  I feel as if a complement about my work is untrue, now, unless it comes with evidence that the piece in question is publishable.  Again, I know this is unreasonable, but it is my emotional response at the moment.  I feel that the only thing which can change my situation is changing my luck in publishing, and any comment about the quality of the work has to be about that in specific, though any writer will tell you they do not know what editors or agents really want in general, that it is impossible to predict what work will be accepted by whom.  Combine all this with the reality that I am spending hundreds of dollars on sending out work at a time when I am already struggling economically.  I am not certain that any of this will be of meaning to anyone, to be honest, and I am not even sure how useful it is for me, other than just recognizing that I know this is all unhealthy and recognize that I am not doing myself any favors by how I perceive the situation. None of that makes it possible for me to change this, any more than I can alter the situation itself, but I also realize all of that does not make remaining as I have been an acceptable option.  The question of what to do about any of it is still unanswered as I still find it impossible to see any real options.