Bookangst R.I.P.

In my "favorites" file, I have a list of blogs, which grows at a steady rate. From time to time I check them out, as I did last night, too tired to write, not wanting to climb into bed at 8:30 p.m. When I think of how I used to sneer at and berate my parents for their early to bed ways. God, they were night owls compared to me! The shame of it all.

Anyway, I went to a blog called Bookangst, where I had visited many times and always noticed that the blogger, an editor, took a chapter of someone's novel apart. Having just got yet another rejection, I thought it might be kind of cool to have an editor look at the first chapter in exchange for only the humiliation of having it critiqued in front of God and everyone, fearing the editor might say this is the worst first chapter in the history of writing and how could anyone sleep at night after writing all those bad sentences?

So I wrote a chripy little note and emailed the first chapter of World of Mirrors. Didn't hear from the editor today. Went out to the blog a few minutes ago. Puzzlement. Looked different. Shit. I looked at the date of the last post and it was MONTHS AGO. Jul7 17th. Hello! Not only that but the little blurb about send me your chapter and I'll critique it if you let me do it online was now gone. Since last night. As was the contact info. Then I noticed that the last post was really kind of bitter. A last, last post. Now I am feeling not only like an unobservant idiot, but an insensitive unobservant idiot. I mean, how much worse can it get? A day late and a dollar short and shit for brains.

Since I've had this cold, I've felt really thick-headed. Couldn't remember Williams Sonoma, could remember somebody's name at work (nor she mine, come to think of it). Couldn't remember how to auto insert a product into a catalog. Didn't really care, either, and my manager knows I don't really care. Feel like an ass morning, noon and night.

I'm glad an underdog won the Booker prize. I hope the Bookangst blogger starts to feel better. Now I'm going to pay my bills and email a fellow writer the Tor chicklit guidelines, which my books don't really fall into what with a slutty adulterous character and a barrel full of other bad apples. God, they such fun to write about. But maybe not sympaticshe (sp?) from a chicklit stand point. I mean, who would want to end up a slutty adulterous character? Not the gentle reader, surely. Not Oprah's readers, who want to be uplifted. Wonder how they like Faulkner? Why am I so nasty tonight?

Maybe I won't suck it up. Maybe I will glower. Yes.

Grapeshot

Glowering