Five years. Several near misses. An acceptance by a pro mag and then subsequent rejection based on a national news item. But I kept sending it out because damn it, it’s my favorite story ever and I don’t care if it’s my best written or whatever, it’s MY favorite.

It’s just been shortlisted at another pro mag. We’ll see. But the point is, I’ve had a lot of people, some editors and also friends, tell me it wasn’t my best work.

Didn’t matter. I think it’s my best work, so there.

I also recently sold what I think is my crappiest little short story after only three rejections.

Screw the categories and try to sell everything.

Would it be reasonable to add useful/useless to the list of categories? I understand the point is to stop thinking in categories, but I’ve noticed also that people will categorise things according to those tags. Useful is when you’re either being a producer (at a recognised, formal employment position), or else consuming what someone else produced. Useless is when you produce without a ready, immediate market, or when you consume something not necessarily created for consumption (like those spoof videos made from newsreels that were featured here a little while ago).

I’m not saying I agree with the above category (I think it’s crap, actually), but it’s a bind that seems to come up a lot and winds up pushing the “art” stuff further away than it needs to be.

I wouldn’t pay attention to critics and anybody else who tries to make you fit the mold. They have psychological reasons for doing so. Those who do do so, however, never will do great things in life, for this is the very opposite of that. Forget everybody else.