Ups and Downs by Sandra Horn

This is a well-worn topic, but then I’m a well-worn writer. I have spasms of sending ‘stuff’ out. Sometimes new stuff, sometimes stuff that’s been the rounds before – on the little flickering wings of hope that this time, this time, it would find a home. Here, dear Editor, is my precious child, a drop of my heart’s blood, a small shining piece of my soul. Take it and cherish it. What?? It doesn’t fit your publishing needs? Thanks but no thanks? Not even that, but silence? I look again and see, now, the taint in my heart’s blood, the deformity in my precious child, the smear across the piece of my soul. How could I have thought anyone would want it, let alone love and cherish it? I am a deluded fool. I will slink off into outer darkness and never show my sorry head again. Thought I could write, did I? Hah!

 Black hole of despair (Fingal's Cave, really)

Or...what was the matter with the idiot who failed to see the worth of my precious child, the life-pulse of my heart’s blood, the star in my soul? Don’t they like dear old badgers or mice who live in grandfather clocks? Did they even look at it? Surely not. Blindworms! Assassins! Destroyers of all hope! 

You may gather from this that I’ve had a rejection from a publisher. I have no idea why I persist in sending out children’s stories these days, when it is quite clear that nobody wants my stuff. Typical Sussex pig-headedness, I suppose. I can’t quite shake off the thought that somebody out there – there must be somebody – will love my precious child, revel in my heart’s blood, listen when my soul speaks. Surely, and all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, there’s somebody?  

Nope.

On the other hand (how lucky that there is another hand) The Writers’ Cafe has published my FGM poem, The Blue Nib will publish three – yes, three of three poems submitted – in the next (March) issue, and I got to the shortlist of 10 in the National Memory Day poetry competition. Blimey! Stunned delightedness!

Then shivery apprehension.

Why are the downs so much further down than the ups are up, I ask myself. Rejection casts such a long shadow and acceptance always has that twinge of anxiety about exposure and what kind of reaction it will get.  A writer’s life, folks!