a check! another solicitation

I've been getting checks in the mail, $100 from CAUSTIC FROLIC, now $40 from F(R)ICTION. I don't keep track of my writing income because the amount is so low (except the $500 from MIDWAY JOURNAL's flash contest, and $500 from BLACK LAWRENCE PRESS's chapbook contest), but this year it's starting to add up. To a few good dinners out, at least.

Still waiting to get a contributor's copy of F(R)ICTION. It exists: here's a picture of one of their staff members (on the right) holding it up at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday. Really eager to see "The Lunatics' Ball" in print.

My "Felicity" flash is attracting no attention on twitter (did my flash friends read it and dislike it?), where I usually have readers, and much more attention on facebook, where I usually don't. (I'm especially grateful to my overseas writer friend Eden Royce, who wrote, "I adore this.")

I should stop here and thank the 300 twitter followers who liked the post on my BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS nod. Just a little over a week ago I was responding to a flood of warm congratulations, but it already feels like old news. Social media with its artificial highs and lows, sped-up cycles of elation and dejection, probably isn't good for my bipolar soul.

I got a solicitation from RAPAHANNOCK REVIEW!  The nonfiction editor likes my piece "The Arithmetic of Memory" in the flash nonfiction issue of LITTLE FICTION/BIG TRUTHS and wants me to send her something. "Move On Up" was just accepted by RHYTHM AND BONES, so I don't really have any flash nonfiction. I'm not sure whether I should send her the 4,000 word essay I just finished revising, or wait until I have something shorter. Still thinking about it. I've had solicitations that didn't pan out in the past, and would like to send something that's right for the magazine.

Despite the huge honor of the Notable listing in BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS, I'm feeling very uncertain about my writing. It's so hard to place work (even flash it seems, which used to be easy), repeated rejections take their toll, I wonder whether my best work is behind me, and whether I believe in the work I'm sending out right now. I'm not as productive as I've been. THE LUNATICS' BALL weighs on me, and I know I should return to my essay collection DO-IT-YOURSELF NIGHT, which was close to ready, and has been languishing for a long time.

I seem to be cycling between elation and dejection here. Maybe all my blog entries are bipolar. Which wouldn't be surprising.

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