Bloody and beat

Well, I've had a long day. Actually everyday is a long one here.  Even the twenty something crowd is dragging.  My days begin at 7am and I'm in workshops or classes for 10 hours straight. If I go to the evening event it's 14 hours.  On top of that, I read 40-60 pages a day on breaks, at lunch and at night to prepare for workshop the next morning.  Then there are other little things, like meetings with staff, that we just have to work in.  Today, I had my staff consult.  That's the time when a member of the staff critiques my original conference submission. 

I was assigned to be critiqued by the editor of a literary magazine.  I heard him speak a couple of times and he seemed to have good insight.  So, I was sort of excited.  Until we met.  Our meeting was the longest 30 minutes of my life.  He liked one paragraph of the twenty pages I submitted.  The rest were long on information and short on substance according to him. My plot was overwhelming, characterization weak, descriptions cliched and frankly, the whole submission seemed a bit satirical to him.  It was quite discouraging.  I wanted to ask why they accepted me if my submission was so bad, but I was a little too stunned to get anything out.  

So, after hearing the bad news, I crawled back to my room, called a couple of writer friends and whined on their shoulders.  I'm feeling much better now, thank you to those with whom I spoke.  Getting bad critiques is part of this whole experience, I suppose.  It certainly brings me back to earth.  I'm lucky my workshop group is so supportive and constructive.  Anyway, I have lots of food for thought and I'll have to bandage up my bruised ego and figure out what works and what doesn't from his comments.  

Of course, if he thinks he'll ever get to publish one of my stories, he can just think again.  'Cuz his publication will be the last place I ever query.