Today, it's chocolate bread for the critiquing group. The color matches my mood. I'm growing more and more tired of failure. I want a warm, fuzzy, feel-good about my writing and it's not going to happen. I've reached the point where I sincerely believe I could steal an award-winning story, put my name on it, and it would come back with thumbs-down comments from the fellow Clarionites. Nothing I write will ever be good enough for them. I just don't have the talent and the gift. Maybe I don't even have the skill. Maybe some of the black mood is hangover from the headache. Maybe it's me coming to grips with the truth. I don't know. I just know I feel awful and very much a failure. I haven't got what it takes. I'll spend the rest of my life selling a story here and there and never really making an impact.
I don't feel like writing -- but I will -- and I don't feel like getting up in the morning -- but I'll do that, too. I am going to be a long time recovering from Clarion. At first, I had a little bud of self-confidence growing. It's withered and died and it's buried at the crossroads so it will never rise again. I'm going to have to start a new sprout of self-confidence when I return and that's something I've never been able to successfully grow.
I'm growing convinced that I'm now a WORSE writer than I was when I arrived here. Not only that, I'm a worse PERSON than I was when I arrived. I'm flawed. I'm not a team player. I don't belong here. I spent most of yesterday alternating between being out cold, trying to suppress the urge to vomit, and biting back tears. I just want to curl up into the fetal position and pull 6 feet of ground over my head.
If I was comfortable with 4-letter words, this entry would be full of them.
It's 0300 hrs. as I type this and I've been unable to sleep. Most of the night has been spent half-crying and the only reason it's not whole-crying is that crying hurts. The other half of the night has been spent wishing for an old-fashioned chamber pot. Some of those idiots outside my window, blaring their music loudly for all at inappropriate times of the normal sleeping hours, have sun roofs. I would dearly love to deliver my physical critique of their musical tastes.