I got a submission rejected yesterday. I knew I would, because it was a “first chapter” call, and I submitted my obviously genre fiction first chapter to an outfit likely looking for literary fiction. They let me down easy, of course.

Do I feel bad about it? Of course. I had fantasies about at least being longlisted, if not actually winning.

I’ve been rejected a lot. I suspect that much of the time, it’s because I have entered works into the realm of literary journals when I’m a genre writer; my stuff “doesn’t fit”. I’ve been told this. Much of the time, although I don’t like to admit it, my work probably doesn’t fit their quality standards either. I don’t know why I keep trying, except that one of my “doesn’t fit” stories got an honorable mention in a clearly literary contest.

I could take my rejections as not being “good enough”, or I could keep trying. I no longer query agents for my novels, instead choosing to self-publish. My reasons for this are less about rejections and more about the horror stories I’ve heard about traditional publishing these days. I go through periods of submitting on Submittable, and occasionally I get published. I’m not universally rejected, and nobody has begged me never to publish anything else again.

Rejections don’t spoil my flow time, nor do they destroy my inspirations. I do hope I get a major acceptance someday, because external validation is something I crave. But I’m still writing.

My favorite thing about writing is getting totally absorbed in the process, a process called “flow”. I am a flow evangelist; I believe that everyone should find a flow activity. Flow contributes through well-being by engaging our brains in something outside ourselves.

Now that I got that out of the way, I will talk about other things I enjoy about writing. One of the biggest is watching my progress. When I was younger, I used a lot of adjectives, and my writing had a lot of “adjective noun, adjective noun” construction. This got a bit sing-songy. Now I write with just enough adjectives to get my point across, and not always paired with a noun directly. I used to use a lot of adverbs, with the same monotony of language. Now I use them sparingly and with more interesting nouns. I think this is an improvement; at least when I read my work over, it sounds better.

I enjoy watching my characters develop. It’s interesting how I have the bare idea of a character at the beginning, and once I start writing, their conversations flesh them out as a real character. I sometimes write conversations with them (which I call interrogations) to develop their characters and help me write.

But all of this comes back to the ability to sit and write, finding the words and going into an altered state where the words flow on the page and I lose track of time. It all goes back to flow.

Daily writing prompt

What positive emotion do you feel most often?

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Fifteen years ago, I would have answered the question, “What positive emotion do you feel most often?” with elation. A perpetual high doesn’t make for a sustainable life, and in fact, I wavered between elation and despair (often in the same day). This was life with untreated bipolar disorder, fast cycling version.

Maybe because of the medication, and maybe because of getting older, my most common positive emotion is contentment. When I was younger, I thought of contentment as something inferior, as a curse that the fairy who didn’t get invited to the christening would cast on the poor baby^*.

Now I prefer contentment. It’s nice to not have to feel the extremes all the time. I do not get exhausted with my contentment as I did with my elation. The opposite of contentment on the spectrum is discontent, which is not a crippling feeling like despair.

I would not trade contentment for the overdose of elation ever again. I like small doses of elation, but I treasure the anchor of calm, peaceful emotion that is contentment.

^* This is a common trope in Western fairy tales in which a family presents a royal baby to the court at large in a christening (baptism) ceremony. The family invites all the witches/fairies/aunts save one. The uninvited one shows up anyhow and curses the baby. Sometimes the curse seems innocuous but causes a lot of harm, at times hilarious, to the child (for example, the child who could not tell a lie).

Daily writing prompt

What change, big or small, would you like your blog to make in the world?

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I don’t expect my blog to change the world. It’s not that kind of blog. I don’t discuss politics or movements in health, relationships, or social issues. I do occasionally post on those, but from a very personal viewpoint.

What slight changes can my blog make? I have two in mind. The first is that I am, unashamedly, a flow evangelist. I talk about the difference a flow activity makes in people’s lives. Flow is a stage of mind where an activity absorbs all one’s consciousness, at optimal levels of competency and challenge. Time flies by when doing the activity. I get my flow from writing, and is a major reason I continue to write. I want everyone to find their flow activities, because they contribute to happiness through engagement, the E in the PERMA model of happiness.

The other change I think my blog fosters is to demystify writing and writers. Many people don’t think they can write, or write and don’t think they deserve to be called a writer. I share my struggles with writer’s block, impostor syndrome, and marketing my books. I also talk about the challenges of scheduling time around a busy and shifting schedule. Every time I write, I hope writers and would-be writers find some of my joy contagious and my struggles identifiable.

My blog is not earth-shaking. But I hope it provides a day in the life of a relatable writer.