Melted Wings --

Egos are a tender part of ones personality, which affects the delicate balance of ones self esteem: everyone wants to feel good about who or what they are. Now all of us make fools out of ourselves on occasions, so it’s hard to feel good about yourself all of the time.

I have written quite a few stories most of which have been met with good results, at least from other idiots like myself. Enough people have blown wind up my skirt to give me a bit of confidence. So I decided to see if someone with some sort of expertise thought they were any good. The problem is when you leave your little pool for other waters, and especially when those waters are swamps, lakes or oceans – it kind of like putting your soul or valuables on the chopping block. These people swing harder – so don’t be surprised you will get whacked across the side of your head and receive a few more scars. If you’re not careful, you could easily lose confidence, passion and most likely find out you’re just not as good as you thought – or in my case hoped.

This transition or metamorphosis hopefully isn’t complete. It started with the creation of a personal blog – now I don’t know what blog means or stands for, it’s not even in my spell check. A blog is on the Internet, and if someone looks hard enough supposedly they could find it. In my case you would have to search quite hard. Next came the letter to the editor – this resulted in a lot of response from my small area. This made me think that perhaps I really could swim in bigger pools – I had the right attitude I never thought I could make money at this stuff and still it was just for fun and to tell my stories to family and friends.

Now, let's see what the big boys think! I went to the top – the short story King, the Readers Digest. Well if you look at it logically I got what I should have expected – nothing. Come on you guys, you only get a trillion of these things a day you could at least tell me to kiss off. Then, I sent three stories to a newspaper – I know, a lot lower than the first try, but I got the same results. Where do you send these things? I’ve sent two others, one each to a T.V. show and a magazine. Then I received my first response – still no, but they were really nice about it.

Now this ego thing can be addictive when the results are positive, but rejection isn’t. I’ll admit I stopped writing stories for a couple of weeks but then I started to tell my stories to those in that little pool again. Ya it’s still warm water and no one's out to prove me wrong or try to ignore me. As a matter of fact, they are telling me they're great and I ought to get them printed somewhere – there goes that ego thing again. That’s all right, since I’ve already been there and know it’s not so easy. I guess I was kind of like that Icarus dude whose father crafted him some wings so he could fly, but who also warned him that he shouldn't fly too low least his wings dip into the waves and get wet - or that he shouldn't fly too high least the sun melt the wax to which the feathers were attached. I haven’t read the story since high school, but as I recall - Icarus started to think he was pretty great, became euphoric and flew too close to the sun and the wax holding his feathers together melted on his wings and it wasn’t a good thing. Such a rapid descent can be kind of hazards to ones health. Perhaps I should just sort of ride the waves - not going too high to melt my wings or too low to get discouraged or depressed. In time hopefully I'll learn to navigate at just the right altitude Maybe I just need to know my place - and think about what made writing these stories so fun in the first place.

I know that all of the stories are true and I enjoy the rush I get from writing them. Maybe I'll just have to hone my stills a little better to bring out the greatest of each story - you can't make this stuff up better than they already are. I guess I should just keep trying until they tell me to get lost. Back to the newspaper –a great place to start, because it hits such a small area. This time I sent two stories and followed it up with a phone call. Then came the return call – they wanted to print one of my stories. All right – a published author, even if hardly anyone read it. Oh well maybe some day I’ll have to write another section at the end of this one – but if not that’s Ok too.