Ralph Pullins

So I've done enough whining. I saw a low-level MMA fight once where the fight ended just because one of the guys got tired of getting hit.  It wasn't a ref stoppage, he wasn't being submitted, in fact, he was still on his feet.  He had taken a few shots to the face and decided that maybe fighting wasn't for him, and he quit.  I remember saying to the guys I was with that if you can't take getting punched in the face, maybe you should take up a different sport.  Maybe checkers, or golf, or tennis, where you rarely get attacked by opponents. I know that I will be rejected.  I know that this will not be the last time that someone isn't scooping what I am pooping, so to speak.  After the thing gets picked up by an agent, I will still have to endure the hope and disappointment when they are trying to sell it to a publisher.  After that, people will (hopefully) read it.  They will for whatever reason, feel compelled to get on Twitter and call me a moron or a monster,

So I've done enough whining. I saw a low-level MMA fight once where the fight ended just because one of the guys got tired of getting hit.  It wasn't a ref stoppage, he wasn't being submitted, in fact, he was still on his feet.  He had taken a few shots to the face and decided that maybe fighting wasn't for him, and he quit.  I remember saying to the guys I was with that if you can't take getting punched in the face, maybe you should take up a different sport.  Maybe checkers, or golf, or tennis, where you rarely get attacked by opponents. I know that I will be rejected.  I know that this will not be the last time that someone isn't scooping what I am pooping, so to speak.  After the thing gets picked up by an agent, I will still have to endure the hope and disappointment when they are trying to sell it to a publisher.  After that, people will (hopefully) read it.  They will for whatever reason, feel compelled to get on Twitter and call me a moron or a monst

"My Mother did me the great disservice of telling me that I could do anything I wanted.  I believed her.  I believed every lie anyone has ever told me, including the big lies like 'everything will be all right'." -Ralph Pullins, "Family Stories" (unpublished) I have been rejected again.  Twice, actually, since the last time I have written about this.  Judging from my choice of quotes above (mine this time), I am ...displeased. For those keeping score at home, I am now 0 for 3. So what, right?  Now is where I go and read a bunch of stories about how Dr Seuss was fired from an advertising job because he was deemed not creative enough, or about how Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, about how some incredible writer was rejected again and again, and shit, yeah, OK, I know all that but really this stuff means the same to me as the poster over the chair at my dentist of the bulldog wearing boxing gloves that reads "hang tough." 

"My Mother did me the great disservice of telling me that I could do anything I wanted.  I believed her.  I believed every lie anyone has ever told me, including the big lies like 'everything will be all right'." -Ralph Pullins, "Family Stories" (unpublished) I have been rejected again.  Twice, actually, since the last time I have written about this.  Judging from my choice of quotes above (mine this time), I am ...displeased. For those keeping score at home, I am now 0 for 3. So what, right?  Now is where I go and read a bunch of stories about how Dr Seuss was fired from an advertising job because he was deemed not creative enough, or about how Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, about how some incredible writer was rejected again and again, and shit, yeah, OK, I know all that but really this stuff means the same to me as the poster over the chair at my dentist of the bulldog wearing boxing gloves that reads "hang tough.

I think there must be something wrong with me. The other day I passed ten thousand words on my new novel.  It's a milestone for me; it means that the new book is a real thing, not just an idea for a book, but it is becoming a significant piece of writing (and a good one, I think).  I'm excited about it, and the words seem to come out of my head and onto the page pretty easily so far, and a few magical times I have had that experience where things just seem to flow out from some external source as if I'm just a conduit, and the direction and concepts that are happening on the page don't even seem to be coming from me at all, that writing sweetspot where things work better than I could have planned for... And it is awesome. However, I still have an unpublished, unrepresented, largely unread novel that is just hanging out on my computer, waiting.  And I think: Why are you sacrificing all of your evenings, all of your lunch hours writing when nobody cares?  I sometimes feel

I think there must be something wrong with me. The other day I passed ten thousand words on my new novel.  It's a milestone for me; it means that the new book is a real thing, not just an idea for a book, but it is becoming a significant piece of writing (and a good one, I think).  I'm excited about it, and the words seem to come out of my head and onto the page pretty easily so far, and a few magical times I have had that experience where things just seem to flow out from some external source as if I'm just a conduit, and the direction and concepts that are happening on the page don't even seem to be coming from me at all, that writing sweetspot where things work better than I could have planned for... And it is awesome. However, I still have an unpublished, unrepresented, largely unread novel that is just hanging out on my computer, waiting.  And I think: Why are you sacrificing all of your evenings, all of your lunch hours writing when nobody cares?  I sometime