Snoop Dog....I Feel Your Pain, Bro

I remember the days of sending out stories to literary journals and magazines and waiting around to see if my particular work was going to "fit the needs of the publication."  My odds were about 30:1 for a long time.  After I got some good publications under my belt and won a couple of prizes, I stopped sending stuff out.  I got caught up in writing the novel, which was a much bigger undertaking, and I pretty much stopped sending stuff out.  Once in a while, I'd write an essay and send it out.  But after I had an entire collection of published stories (nobody wanted as a book) and an entire collection of published essays (nobody wanted as a book), I pretty much gave up on that whole enterprise.  It's a discouraging business, but as Alan Ginsberg says: “To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.” True. So true.