#Clarion's extended window closed yesterday you see

[aftergloom]

If the aim is publishing, then getting on a first-name basis with rejection is part of the deal. The rejection is not necessarily an assessment of your value as a writer, only the work itself not being a good fit for that market or agent at that moment.

With workshops, it's a little different, because they look at where you're coming from and what your experience is, and where you're going. Being rejected for a workshop that takes the strongest possible candidates with the best possible fit for the group and its mediators, so in a way it feels like you're on the right track even if this year isn't your year. You can always try again.

However.

I think the process of submitting to a writing workshop is worse in a lot of ways, because the first step is acknowledging that if you're good enough to get in, they are going to smash you like a teacup on concrete and put you back together with molten gold, but fuck if that process isn't going to be rough.

I think the fear of being accepted is so much greater than the fear of rejection at this point because you know that you're going to subject yourself to the process for six weeks or more. And maybe that's the key indicator of being "ready" or not. If your ego can't take it, then it's not time yet.

So I sat there chomping on how "ready" I felt, and it's not the critique that I flinch from, it's the seventy hours of work every week and being worried that I won't be able to produce anything even remotely worth workshopping under duress.

Which is literally the stupidest thought I have ever had, because I had to remind myself I've been doing exactly that under a time limit for a year on top of grinding on a three hundred fifty thousand word, fully-plotted manuscript.

So the tl;dr of this is that my short-term memory is shot and because of that, I am a knot of stress trying to distract myself with Animal Crossing in excess.