'Snore' and 'Ouch'

Compared with my usual Saturdays, I've pretty much frittered away the day so far with sleeping in until I woke followed by a leisurely pot of tea and long, long read. I did get the washing started, but then I had breakfast out in the backyard on the Xmas swing, after which, seduced by the cosiness of that nook and susurrus of leaves overhead, I promptly fell asleep again and didn't wake until 14.00. Then I had to scurry around to finish the washing.

Ah well, in such cases, one just has to accept that one obviously really really needed the nap time and take it from there. It has been that kind of a week. I've been constantly tired, mostly, I surmise, because I'm almost off the serious pain killers and am no longer enjoying their get-up-and-go chemical kick or pharmaceutically induced happy feelings. I'll have to be more realistic about my energy levels from now on, which is both good and bad, but definitely preferable to having a drugged up brain dazedly chugging along at quarter speed. Still, I do find myself yearning to pop a power pill every now and then. That's okay. They've served me long and well, those tablets, and it's only natural I should miss them. It's only an addiction when you give into that yearning. I won't.

Anyway, just as I did on my nap-filled Wednesday, I've caught up on my two days of Arvo Job and commuting sleep deficit and am quite perky now. I also did get in some daydreaming time whilst staring at the canopy over the Xmas swing this morning, so I shall try to squeeze in an hour at the keyboard before I head off for an evening of company, culture, and possibly fingerfood.

Apart from tiredness, napping and rationing drugs, this week has mostly been about rejections. One slipped by without causing more than the usual oh, darn and drats, I would have liked to have made it into that antho reaction, but the other one, well, I'd foolishly let myself get to the point where I was expecting at the very least one of those nice rejections. Alas, and oww, oww, oww!, the one I received from the editors was anything but. So why did I abandon my usual phlegmatic wait-and-see approach and let myself build up hope? Well, 'twas the fault of the report I received from the initial three readers, which was so positive and enthusiastic and full of phrases like well written and intelligent , pieced together extremely well, fun and interesting style and good flow, funny and sharply put together, the unusual structure works well, I enjoyed it, etc etc etc, I could go on and on quoting, believe me, because they were so darned spirit uplifting and had me smiling for days. The readers all agreed the story needed further tweaking, which is why I thought it would probably be rejected, but in the needs more work kind of way. At worst, a it didn't grab us was on the cards, I thought. But the editors' combined verdict was much harsher. I shall abstain from quoting. It never ceases to amaze me how very differently people react to the same story. Luckily, I have both the readers' reports, and previously received positive comments to keep me from hurtling said story into an abyss. I shall simply buck up, pull out a spanner and tweak the story some more, and it will go out again.

After all, possession of an often irrational stubbornness perseverance in the face of repeated rebuffs is a character prerequisite for writers. And 'keeping on keeping on' is our writerly job description.