Whew–I reread yesterday’s post and I don’t care what the university thinks, I write “Depression” really well.

For those of you concerned that I mightn’t bounce back from yesterday’s devastating rejection, I am writing, first, just to be writing at all, and second, to reassure you that I am made of tougher stuff than that.

The snow, indeed, stopped falling in the night, leaving lovely huge drifts of distraction for me to shovel later today; the sun is shining brightly again through my office window; I am back at my keyboard, determined to keep on keeping on.

A million years ago when I was still a teacher, I used to say that it was so hard to know if you were doing a good job, because the opportunities to see your “finished product” (a happy and successful former student) came so rarely. Those times when a newly-minted young adult stopped by or wrote to me to tell me how they were doing were precious precisely because of their rarity.

At least as a teacher, you have the opportunity to see the faces of those you are hoping to touch (figuratively, not literally, of course). You have the chance to see the lightbulbs snapping to life over students’ heads, and you know that you are making a difference, at least at that moment.

But as a writer, unless and until you gain a following, you operate in a vacuum, where the only sounds you hear are those of your own words bouncing back to you. It’s difficult to know for sure if what you are writing is good and true, or merely sound and vibration. Those crystal clear moments of feedback that arrive in the form of rejection letters, anonymous postings to Web sites, or words of advice from your well-respected mentors are sometimes the only indicator you have of whether or not what you are doing is worth doing at all.

Then again, I have to remind myself occasionally, for whom am I writing? Do I write for myself? Am I writing for an audience? I think it is some combination of the two. I will write, always, for myself, because there are thoughts and visions that swirl around the inside of my head, darkening and coalescing and keeping me awake at night with their intense conversations, that simply must come out.

But the simple fact is, yes, I want someone else out there to read what I have written, to experience what I have wrought, and to share in that world with me.

So–today, I am back in the saddle again. As I wrote to a friend, I can’t be bucked off that easily, but neither can I deny that falling certainly did smart. 

No one is quite rid of me yet.