We can be together
Ah you and me
We should be together
We are outlaws in the eyes of America
--Jefferson Airplane*
I think, what I am finding is, you have to find a place where you are happy with the content, and the style, and you just have to make sure it is nice and proofread. It's important to understand the weaknesses and limitations of it, and focus on the strengths of it, and make the strengths genuinely outweigh the weaknesses. And I am trying to put out a professional quality product.
I feel like I am capable of doing all of these things, and now I am to the point of ordering a proof and really going through and proofreading. I republished my short story collection after having done so, and I feel like I have caught the majority of my mistakes. There are still some, but they aren't as noticeable. I think.
There is always a certain amount of insecurity, but I feel like if I focus on the quality and make both an artistic statement and also putting out something that has the guise of legitimacy, I will be success eventually. The next thing I will have to learn how to do, as I start writing my next manuscript (and I have started. I have about 2,000 so far, after one sitting).
I have learned a lot so far, and for that I am grateful. I can't wait to see what the next year holds as I finish up grad school and get a job (hopefully. I am already looking). On top of all this I have to make sure I kick ass at school for like four more classes and my thesis. Then I will be home free, and with a killer GPA. I feel like I earned my grades, too. I am thinking part of my marketing strategy will also hinge on me getting some of these papers published. That will also take a lot of work, but if I am successful, that will only lend more credibility to myself as a writer of literature. I am thinking I have some papers by now that if I continue to work on them and get advice on them from my professors, I will be able to get something published. I am also going to do some conferences at the school so I can get some more experience doing that.
Maybe after I work for a few years, I can go back to school after I get my shit paid off and some credit built. Maybe I will go back in my forties. If I did, it would depend on my level of success as a part-time writer as I work a full time job. If I can make it worthwhile, then I might have a justifiable enough reason to keep going, eventually. For now, I just have to make money. I don't want to be a selfish prick or anything, I just want to break free from my debt and start over, finally, with two degrees under my belt, and future prospects.
Indeed, as I sit here, thinking about my life right now, and my career, it makes me feel like I have better things than I would have just by accepting things that way they were and pushing forward without a second thought. I could easily be somewhere else, doing something else, just working hard and not feeling worthwhile. Just feeling all interpellated and numb. While I might eventually get there anyway --- at least I prolonged it to my thirties. It was bound to happen eventually. Still, some of the most significant writers of the last century worked other jobs or had other people to support them. They weren't fucking making money doing it, either.
Maybe we are just cogs on a mechanism no one can truly understand, the only possibility being placed on the hopes of eternity past material existence --- of which proof I have seen no evidence of and can never be sure about.
Maybe I am just fooling myself, and we are all just fooling ourselves? Aren't we all just as strong and smart and capable as we think we are, and if we admit to weakness we become it? That is true if language is how we define our finite universe.
So I guess that also means life is how we define it? I think that is something I can take away from this rambling.
Note
*"We Can Be Together" lyrics courtesy of lyricsfreak.com.
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