Reorientation

Recent News:

1)Yesterday I received my first rejection notice from the University of Texas at Austin.

2) Today I began work on the new novel I have been planning.

As far as I'm concerned, that is the best way to meet the closing of one door: use its momentum to send you full tilt off in another direction. Not that the relationship between these two events is quite so well-defined. I've been planning this new work for some time--doing my research, naming characters, organizing and reorganizing notecards on the giant tables an my girlfriend's shop. I'm excited. I remember in high school, when I was training to be a wrestling champion, how I would sit in class and in my notebook I would create training regiments, even in the off-season, balancing diet, exercise, and sport specific training. I've begun doing that again, only now its more like:

8:00 am - 8:30 Meditation
8:30 am - 12 New Scenes
12 Lunch
12:30 - 2 pm Exercise (exercise is still a vital part of even my creative process)
2 pm Get ready for work
7 pm "Lunch" Break - Revise Old Scenes

To make a long story short, I am feeling organized, inspired, and ready to get in the zone. One thing that I have found over the past week, as I've been corresponding with an old--shall I say collegue?--from college, is that it really helps my focus to have a forum in which to talk about writing. About new work, about process, about publishing. It helps both to keep me focused and to lift my confidence level. I begin to realize, "Hey, I've been at this a while. I actually sort of know what I'm talking about." And for young writers, just having cause to feel as though you are legitimate can be a huge help and inspiration. So I would also like to step up my posting here, as a way of keeping that momentum going.

One of the best ways, I am learning, to move past rejection is to just keep writing. "It's alright," you can then tell yourself. "It's just 'cause they haven't seen what I'm working on now."