HAVE I REALLY BEEN GONE THAT LONG?

                   

                                    WHERE THE HELL HAVE I BEEN?

Probably the easiest of the questions to answer. I was wrapping up all those years I'd spent on an everyday job. I was spending a lot of time at open microphones and chasing after the recognition of poetry journals that paid in one contributor's copy. I was getting wrapped up in parts of the literary life I wasn't cut out for or comfortable in.

I was back in my studio, working on my painting and entering things in all kinds of shows. The challenging ones were the juried exhibitions. Who knows what goes through a juror's mind? Whatever it is I have garnered a few awards (some of them accompanied with cash). Sure, it was local, but it led to having pieces placed in Massachusetts, Virginia, Georgia, and other locales.

My wife and I have traveled to wonderful places. Alaska and British Columbia, the Mediterranean. All over the Southwest U.S. I photographed and sketched and compiled enough material for a whole other lifetime. Still, there was a nagging question. Was I really a "WRITER"?

Now I've embarked on a journey into that next level of difficulty. Chasing after that elusive goal of being published by literary journals and getting paid for the experience. Having been the other route, being thankful just for the chance to see my name in print, and, believe me, I always was, I felt it was time to kick it up a notch.

So, I sat down at this infernal machine and began banging on the keys with all the intensity of an enraged ape. I sent out story after story. I self-published two poetry chapbooks that I flogged at readings where, if you were lucky, they passed the hat to cover the gas it took to get there and you sold enough merchandise to cover printing costs.

Stories were sent out. Stories were systematically rejected. All this I have lovingly enshrined on a spread sheet created for just that purpose. What was the main lesson learned? Have some fun while you're driving yourself to distraction.

Don't take rejection personally. There are a lot of people pounding away at keyboards and a shrinking galaxy of outlets. The people who are tasked with reading what is sent to these journals and anthologies see an incomprehensible number of manuscripts all during their reading periods. What you felt to be so unique and divinely inspired may just be the three hundredth treatment of that same plot and setting.

Don't give up. If it gets kicked back with that perfunctory, "Not for us at this time", turn it right around. There are books full of stories about stories that were rejected innumerable times. You might just be the next Papa Hemingway, but even he had to be discovered.

Don't write what you think everyone else wants to read. Write what it is you want to say. Write it in the way you want to say it. Be you! It's all you've got. Most of all, don't quit. I had my first poem published in 1975. I've had dozens of fits and starts. I'm still here. Where's it going to lead. Who cares. In all reality, it is the journey and not the destination.

In the words of Jack Nicholson in, THE SHINING, "I'm baaaack!"