I'm a loser, baby...

Caveat: It's totally gauche to bitch about grant results. Truly truly truly (a la Morrissey).

So I've resisted, for a while. I guess until tonight. But seriously! My novel-in-progress has been rejected for almost every grant imagineable, and more than once. I'm thick-skinned, for the most part, but this now officially stings. I'm beginning to resent my cigar-smoking, too-friendly mail carrier! I'm sure it's entirely his fault.

I'm pretty confident that my fictional skills have improved significantly the past couple of years of focussing exclusively on the novel form, and well, I think that so far, it's pretty good. Workshop feedback has been tremendously supportive, and whenever I've done readings from it, the audience has dug the shit. So what's the problem?

Maybe it really, really sucks. Maybe. But deep down, I just hear someone yelling "It doesn't suck! It's good shit!" But my flaw is that I'm preoccupied with what is measurable - grants, awards, all that non-objective crap that takes us out of our solitude and either elates or slays us.

I guess I got over-confident, and the juries just didn't agree with me. I hate that I worry about this shit. I guess we all do. Right?

But come on - little Jehovah's Witness kid, punk rock sister, Uncle Bowie-wannabe, death, shunning, demon rituals, and Joy Division? What's not to dig here? Tell me you don't want to know what those evangelical types knocking on your door REALLY thought!

I'm feeling vindictive and rebellious already (despite the retirement of my former piercings) - my reading on Nov. 26 will kick ass!! And screw all arts councils! Except, of course, for my last application still pending. I'm sure they're cool. Really.

Cheers.

TWIST OF CAIN - Danzig (that's what I was listening to on the swings at midnight last night. Til the fuzz parked nearby like I was doing someting weird, belting Danzing and Public Enemy lyrics, swinging on the swings. Totally took the solitude and fun out of it. Toto, we ain't in Parkdale anymore...)