Absolute Gentleman

I turned in my first bit of my novel to the workshop group. I didn’t qualify it with any critical commentary, because I can’t stand when writers do that. Students I can tolerate because they are scared of just about everything — especially sharing their writing with others. I’m scared, too, but I know no other way to try and bust out of this post-MFA funk than by putting it out there to get obliterated.

I’m absolutely lost, though. When I do readings I read stuff I wrote a year or more ago. I have no confidence anymore. In writing this garbage now, I’m hoping to work my way back somewhere — maybe a place when a Greywolf Press executive editor would sit with me and discuss how great my work was over breakfast, while my MFA peers looked on in palpable hatred. I want to work to get toward a place of confidence again.

The novel pieces total about seven thousand words now. I know there’s a story there.