annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feb 12th Well, today (the day in which I'm trying to send an extract of this blog to a literary agent who will be on the writers' retreat I'm going on next week), no readers! For the first time since I've had stats, not one reader on the wordpress. Which is both alarming and liberating. I've really struggled with this submission, which is a bit mental as I only wanted to spend a few days away somewhere nice. An old friend of mine gave me some money for a holiday and it all got very complicated till in the end I'm going to this writers' retreat for a long weekend at a time when there will be agents there and we can submit 3000 words for a free response and half hour chat. But I'm too tired to do it properly, and with all that benefits shit going on I'm verging on proper mental - totally lost all capacity to make judgements. The extract I chose sometimes looks OK, other times it reads like shit. I sent it off without a front page, without my name on. Now I've been trying all evening to write a covering letter but it always ends up with too much about Sam so I cut it out and it's too little. I feel as if I want to tell her story, to spend the time with her, but maybe it's not a good idea. I don't know whether to write to the woman who runs the retreats, who's been very nice on the phone, and tell her I'm mental with the benefits thing or not. I mean, it is real, the effect of all that. I bimble along, doing the best I can, then I have to prove I'm mental to keep getting the benefits I get, which are little enough, but I need them. When I first look at the form I feel as if I'm not like that, I must have got better, but then all the evidence comes piling in, from the GP and the day centres and therapists I see, of all the things I've done or failed to do, or fucked right up - and in fact that all needs to go in the present tense - the stuff I do or fail to do or fuck right up... Big sigh. I've written a letter to her but haven't sent it yet. I'll have a think in the morning. Today was Witty's and Poolie's birthday. We're all going to die in the end. I sometimes wish I did believe, properly believe in some kind of life after this life, but wanting it doesn't make it happen. I don't believe. I hope there's something, I hope we'll meet again, but hoping isn't knowing. People who do have that faith drive me nuts. I remember when Barb (Witty) died, people wrote stuff on her facebook page about her being in a place where all the art materials were free, that she'd never again have to worry about not having enough paint. Words fail me. I can't begin to imagine what else is going on in a mind that can think like that. No wonder the world is so fucked up. I ought to get back to writing gratitudes, I want to, but I can't right now. Good night. 12:21 a.m. - 13.02.20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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