I got my box of GH entries to judge today. And I made the mistake of looking at my calendar–my chapter meeting isn’t the Saturday after next as I thought. It’s this Saturday coming. Not good. Since I’m the Secretary and the Newsletter Editor, you can guess what I’ll be doing in the near future. Oops. I don’t know why THIRD Saturday is so stuck in my head.

On a positive note, my hero’s finished masturbating! YAY! Tis a good thing, because pretty soon we were both going to start chafing.

I was also slapped upside the head with an epiphany while waiting for the short kid to pee in Walmart, because we’d walked all the way back to the truck before he announced he had to go and he knew he was going to suffer if he didn’t squeeze out at least a few drops.

I’m afraid of rejection. (I didn’t say it was an original epiphany) I was thinking about a conversation with the husband in which he said (basically) “Did you wash my blue sweatshirt? Have you started the year-end paperwork for the company yet? Where’s the charger for my drill? Did you finish your book yet? Wow, the house is trashed.”

My response: “Yes. No. F-d if I know. If I don’t finish it, they can’t reject it. And bite me.”

It was meant to be off-the-cuff. I mean, in the last several plus years I’ve gotten rejections. Good rejections, too. Yeah, I ranted and raved and drowned my sorrow in chocolate. But it’s a learning curve. So anyway, back to the epiphany–my subconscious coughed up a nasty little tidbit for me.

I know the how-to, the why-to, the who-to, POV and GMC and BM and I’ve memorized The Writer’s Journey and Writing the Breakout Novel, and blah blah blah. So now that I have the tools, if I get rejected it’s because I’m just not good enough.

Not that a writer isn’t always learning and honing her craft–I’m aware that you learn and grow or you stagnate like Thanksgiving leftovers. I didn’t say it made sense. My subconscious rarely does. I’m also terrified of any discussion regarding the scope of the universe, and if you talk long enough about the rotation of the earth and spinning on its axis, I’ll get dizzy and throw up. (Earth Science was a bitch.) But the cesspool in the darkest regions of my mind is telling me I’ve got no more excuses for the next rejection, other than just plain old didn’t cut it.

And then he peed and we left.