The torture of submission, the wreck of rejection: guest blog by Thomas Fuller

Yesterday: the sort of day I kept expecting to become darker and darker. The day in fact did not become darker and darker but lighter and lighter, so light in fact that I pushed myself away from the desk at 4 p.m.and went for a long walk around the neighborhood, gathering acrylics and water colors for my next painting.

This morning: the sort of day I weigh the words submission and rejection as they relate to the writer's situation in creating new work and getting it out into the world.

Could there be two crueller, misanthropic words? Two words more antithetical to the spirit of art than submission and rejection?  

I don't submit, do you? As to rejection, I prefer the personal form of self-rejection or rejection from my inner circle of advisors, those who love me enough to tell me the truth.

I make a practice of rejecting rejection slips whenever and wherever I find them. As to submissions, I submit that they're unnecessary to the strong writer whose work, once it's done, is always enough on its own.

I'm spending the rest of this day straightening accounts--my credit card's expired and everything I owe to the corporate giants, to whom I've submitted on automatic pay, has been cancelled overnight (Apple, Kaiser, Amazon et.al.) The third, fourth and fifth worst words in the language are Password and User Name.

Then I'll look at some art that makes me happy, partially because I don't understand it and partially because I do.

 "Gloves", Meret Oppenheim, (1942-45).