Saturday 5 December 2009

I feel like quitting.

Okay, I know that sounds defeatist. Perhaps it is the time of the year. I do not like December. It is usually hot. There is Christmas - something which stopped being any fun about the year I turned four - and my birthday which is close enough to Christmas that nobody really notices it. (That's fine with me. I don't like birthdays for me either. I have reached a point where it is just inutterably depressing to get older.)

My third Christmas was fine. I was given a wonderful little Hornby train set. My father and I spent the morning playing with it under the dining room table at my grandparent's house. I read the instructions to him and he set it up...there were not too many instructions but I did manage it myself. Christmas went downhill after that. There was always a problem because my maternal grandmother wanted us to spend the entire day with her. We wanted to spend it with my paternal grandparents who, although strict, were the sort of people with whom you could always feel secure. They were happily married. My maternal grandparents were not. Christmas feels more like maternal grandparents than my paternal grandparents. I am not happily married to it. Indeed, I feel entirely anti-social about it and all the fuss.

In a week I will have been writing the blog for a year. In the process I have found some other blogs and virtually met some people (and actually met one person). It has been interesting. If I can keep it up then I will have achieved my goal of writing it for a year. My other writing is a mess. It usually is. I am not a disciplined writer. I cannot start at the beginning of a book and work my way through to the end. It just does not happen like that. I know there are writers who decide exactly what is going to happen and exactly what their characters are going to be like. Mine tell me. I might argue with them - but that's another story.

I am not sure what else I have achieved - and yet I have been busy all the year. It feels as if the year has only just started not as if it is ending. I looked at some other blogs this morning. You have all read more than me - and I thought I had read a lot. Those who knit have knitted more than me - and I thought I had done quite a lot for me. Writing? Well, that has been up and down for all of us. It is the writing which is the problem. It is not simple. Nicola Morgan is wrong to suggest that there is a very simple theory to getting published. I followed all the rules and I can't even get a rejection slip. I can't even get a darn response. I feel like quitting.
....but I promised Ms Whirlwind she would have the sequel of the sequel for Christmas.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't compare yourself to other people; you are unique, cat hairs and all. Quit if you don't like writing anymore, but bearing in mind you blog a lot more than I do, I reckon you still enjoy it. Feeling demoralised is an artist's rite of passage.

Adelaide Dupont said...

I have characters tell me what to do as well.

And then sometimes they don't want to do it.

Miss Whirlwind ... now you have seen the fury of a child fan.

catdownunder said...

I can't NOT write Donna - but I am fed up with the fact that I cannot get a response - a rejection slip would be a response! Nicola makes me depressed - she seems to think that at least people get a response. It doesn't happen. I promised the child - and you keep promises to children whatever.

Rachel Fenton said...

Blog less, spend that time sending out more queries, it doesn't matter how many times you do not receive a rejection, or even if you do - statistically, you will eventually, trust me on this one! -just keep on keeping on and good things happen: this I believe in (more than Santa)! You have nothing to prove to anyone else. Now, brush off those loose cat hairs and get back on the case!

Anonymous said...

Who are you sending queries to and what are you querying: full length manuscripts, shorts?

I'm surprised you aren't receiving anything at all.

catdownunder said...

In a way I am not surprised. It is, I suspect, the old issue. At this end it is, "You aren't writing about Australia. We are not interested in representing you so we won't even bother to reply." At the other end it is probably,"You live in Australia. Why aren't you writing about Australia? Why can't you get an Australian agent? We won't bother to reply."
This would, I suspect, be much less of an issue if I had already had something published. It is a sort of Catch 22 situation!
I shall go and arrange some cat hair of a different sort.
Thanks for the support.