This week’s been a real Educationfest [TM], not just personally but professionally. The most significant portion of this, in relation to writing, ultimately centres around how I place emotion into work. I’m not referring to the writing, but hope when things get sent away for submissions or competitions that I might win; this could be when everything changes. Expectation is a very cruel mistress. It’s time I stopped bending the knee.
This is the moment where something is created purely for my own benefit, sent to someone and then forget about, because there are more important things to be anticipating. It’s a terrible, destructive cycle of disbelief and anger and it will be broken this weekend, for no other reason than I have decided to produce summat as a tribute to my step aunt that shows a lesson has been learnt.
Writing is not for other people, it is for me.
Yes, of course it’s great if someone else looks at your work and connects with it and YES it would be lovely to be paid but as I am now actively pursuing avenues where that money is not dependent on a third party facilitator, it is time to accept that expectation and anticipation are under my control now and not someone else’s to dictate. I should thank the people who provided the last form of formal rejection for that poke: when it’s apparent that your work was great, but didn’t fit the frame.
My work’s not here to align with other people’s world views. This is not about being contrite and supplicant when it comes to output. I say what I do, for very good reason, and there is NEVER a moment those words don’t do as I ask them. That’s the whole point with all the dance that is submission and rejection: this is not school. If you’re marking my work on your perceived notion of ‘correct’ then everybody is royally screwed. What matters as much, if not more than the words is the process within each journey.
Therefore, this weekend I’m making something, just for me, as a result of the understanding that this is really how all of this should work: not writing as obligation, or to appease a deadline. Writing is expression, art, creativity but, most importantly self education. From these process, you learn to be better. Therefore, doing the lines is the equivalent of putting in miles on my static bike or reps with a resistance band. Getting better, stronger, and more capable only comes with practice.
Results are irrelevant if the journey matters more.
The Internet of Words 
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