My self esteem is often so devastated that I feel less than human. These are the manifestations of the disease, but it is not hard to understand the development of these social maladjustments. I have 7 years of higher education and nearly 40 years of dedicated involvement in the production my work. My siblings and family still see my efforts as a hobby, even though I have the same level of education as a lawyer or general practitioner.

I often surmise how damaged a professional in any discipline would be if they spent many years in school and in practice, yet received almost no interest or positive support for their efforts when they participate in the world. Even more damaging is the necessity to underwrite the costs of producing work at my own expense. The money I have spent over the past four decades would have bought me a lovely house, and the costs of my 7 years of college would have made a nice nest egg for my retirement.

I did benefit from my education in that I have been teaching at a state university for three decades. The salary has made my continuing efforts possible. The school, however, has no interest in the arts, and we are funded at a level that is insubstantial compared to competing academic disciplines. Our classrooms have been unpainted for thirty years, and our equipment budget is nearly non-existent. We are of no interest nor consequence, and the damage to self esteem is painful and palpable in that we fail to meet students needs, thus limiting their future prospects and success.

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There is another way you can look at this too–you can start working on the novel while also taking one or two of your best stories and trying to revise them for publication in journals (if you haven’t already). Publishing in a lit journal, particularly a top or near top-tier one will give you legitimacy for your novel as well as for the collection of shorts if you end up shopping that down the line.

But I sympathize with you; I really do. I stumbled in here because I just found out I lost a contest, and I’m being quite silly about it. As Theresa says, there are no guarantees, and this can be a very thorny path.

A number of people reminded me that I need to separate publishing from writing. Whether I am published or not, I can still enjoy the actual craft. After all, if (on some level) I don’t love writing, then what the hell am I doing? I do love writing, and I do love telling stories, and I love the occasional touches of poetry that I find in my prose, and I have to remind myself that it’s okay to fail.

In thinking about my depression, I realized that I have to take some of the pressure off myself. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to be ok with my life the way it is right now and stop comparing it to some potential life. I am not homeless or hungry or sick. I have a happy family and some good friends and a chance to sneak in some writing every now and then. It’s not a bad life. Of course, this is easier said than done. Part of what drives me to write is an ambition to produce great work that others will share (I know this seems grandiose, but- come on- that’s part of what drives you too, right?). This ambition is fueled both by negative and positive emotions. I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that, while part of my motivation in writing comes from love and positive emotions, another part of what drives me to stay up long past bed time to scratch out a few pages of my novel are darker emotions: jealousy, fear, and an almost comically selfish notion that, yes, it really is all about me, me and me.

So for now I have my new mantra. My life is ok the way it is, and let’s see how things play out.

I also wanted to follow up and say I liked reading JSB’s suggestion about the spike. I appreciate Kristi Holl’s recommendation of Ralph Keyes’ Writer’s Book Of Hope. Thanks Theresa for the tough love. I agree with most of the commenters who mentioned that the short fiction market seems to be dying out and that I really need to just keep grinding away. I think Will Entriken touched on an interesting idea by suggesting that the literary fiction market is oriented toward selling to stories to writers rather than selling to readers although, to be fair, I’ve always thought of literary journals as the equivalent to tiny art and photo galleries, and it’s okay for artists to support the arts.

Happy 2008-

Armand

This was a couple years ago now. What did I do? I started writing a novel.