It's not enough. It's not good enough. There isn't enough. I'm not good enough. Not fast enough. Enough people didn't see it. I've had enough.

I've been going through my submission deadline database with dread, looking at the files that have not yet been published by any lit mag, of all sorts--poetry, high-resolution jpegs, prose, photographs of my paintings. It seems like a tiny, amateurish body of work...because the negativity muse has come. She's the antithesis of your creative muse. Her voice grates on you and she does nothing but complain, but whenever she comes around again, your reasons for not dropping her as a friend seem feeble and unprincipled, so you make polite sounds in between her monologues of bitchery.

That's how I feel, sitting here with that annoying harpy, who wants me to trash my work and retire from having any creative impulses. But I know I don't want that, so I'm trying to stay positive.

Today I plan on retiring some of my work that hasn't been successful in the submission rounds, beginning the long process of putting art on DeviantArt in my portfolio or putting writing in my proverbial scrap folder (but not the trash). The fact that I've outgrown or stopped advocating for certain work should be a sign that I've learned, progressed, and developed, not that I suck.

​Take that, negativity muse!