Ernie & Me
June 26, 2000
7:38 a.m.
So, we're back. Michigan can be a very beautiful state. We spent a week up in the northern area--Mackinac Island to be specific. It was a very nice trip, with lots of walking and biking, a fair amount of sleeping, and otherwise generally relaxing and having fun. I did nothing remotely associated with either work or writing, unless you consider the fact that I did manage to read Neil Stephenson's "The Diamond Age," which I thought had a five-star beginning and a two-star finish. Also, in wandering around the Mackinac Island public library, picked up a biography of Ernest Hemingway, which I've just started picking through. It was one of those used book sales that libraries occasionally have, and the book is worn and dog eared. But it appears to still read just fine. But today is another Monday, eh? I returned to find a pair of rejections. Each had nice things to say, but were still rejections. Here's what Hemingway had to say about rejections, by the way: "...every day the rejected manuscripts would come back through the slot in the door of that bare room where I lived over Montmatre sawmill. They'd fall through the slot onto the wood floor, and clipped to them was that most savage of all reprimands--the printed rejections slip. The rejection slip is hard to take on an empty stomach and there were times when I'd sit at that old wooden table and read one of those cold slips that had been attached to a story I had loved and worked on very hard and believed in, and I couldn't help crying." I read that this morning as I ate my breakfast. Somehow it made things better. Things fell into place. I was sitting there on the stool, eating my shredded wheat and trying to get myself into the work mode again, and suddenly I felt very focused. Hemingway was rejected. Those rejections hurt him to the point where he would cry. I wish I could describe how that piece of knowledge makes me feel. When I came downstairs I got directly to work. I dropped myself into the story I had left off with, and got maybe another 500 words or so into it. I think it's going to be good--but who can ever really say? This much I know, though. I'm going to love this story. And I'm going to work on it very hard and get it to the point where I believe in it. Then I'm going to drop it through the mail slot and see what happens.  You and Hemingway ... sure, Ron ... sure Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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