I nailed the landing. (To mix my sports metaphors.) At least I think I did. But it took me about four tries. If this were the Olympics, I'd be out of the competition.
I didn’t sleep well last night thanks to a rejection that arrived at 8:10 and wasn't read until just before bed. What are editors thinking? Do they believe that ruining a good night’s sleep is preferable to ruining a good day’s work? But if I don’t sleep well during the night I won’t work well the next day.
I attended a luncheon this week with some other freelance travel writers, one of whom claimed that a recent video of his had garnered seven million views. He posts videos now, he said, because people are bored with photographs. As someone who works with the written word, I felt doubly out of touch. But prose, while less popular than visuals, still has the better shot at longevity.
If writers say they enjoy writing it's only because the activity is preferable to the guilt of not writing that precedes it and the melancholy of having written crap that follows it.
In his memoir Hitch 22, Christopher Hitchens quotes William Safire as saying that writers "should avoid clichés like the plague."
Saturday evening I received an email from an agent passing on my memoir. Say what you want about agents, but they do work long hours.