Dreaming of Cats

I had a dream last night;
Middlekid has a small but tall chest of drawers in her room. In my dream, Peppercorn crawled out from underneath it, and had about eight kittens with her. The reason she disappeared was because she was busy having kittens, not because some wastrel ran over her. Weird, considering we had her fixed in March in real life.

It was a lovely dream, but I don't know where to file it.

Of Cats and Assholes

Some miserable, worthless fuck-wad ran over our cat this morning. No one seems to have seen anything, and the coward drove off. Any way you slice it, Peppercorn is gone, gone, gone, and Mandy has to stay locked in the house because he won't stay off the street, sniffing the spot where she was lying.

This just sucks.

Anthropomorphic Food, Musical Manuscripts

Normally, I don't like eating things with faces, but for a punschkugel, I'll make an exception.

In other news, there is such a big, big difference between the phrase "the novel is in the bag," and "I have bagged the novel." Is there a day in the future when I am sure enough of myself as a writer to start a project I believe in and ram it right on through to the end without waffling, wandering off, being unfaithful? In short, the novel is back on the back burner, yes, again, because I feel like I'm beating my own head in with a brick that would rather be doing something else.
I really do fantasize about a day when I feel as if I have some clue what I'm doing as a writer and I know it may never come. Maybe it doesn't need to? Perhaps this is just the way I do things. Work on something a bit until it stalls. Put it aside and work on something else until that stalls. As long as I don't just play musical manuscripts, I mean, as long as things are getting finished and submitted in their own good time, it's ok, right? Right?

Kapwing!

I'm getting better at handling rejections- some still hurt more than others, but for the most part they are all a learning experience.  At some point I was vaguely thinking there must be a magic number of times you can submit something before it becomes impossible ignore the fact that it's crap, even if you still can't see it.  I never really got around to deciding what this number is, or if it even exists; I retired many things myself, especially in my first year or so of submitting because my learning curve was steep.  (You know what I mean, perhaps?  That "thank BOB nobody ever accepted this!" story?)

The ones I stuck with have either been accepted somewhere (yay!) or had enough positive comments that I knew they were worth subbing.  Except for this one story.  It has been held rather long in some places, read by more than one reader in some places, but, in the end, always returned without comment.

And I've submitted it more than any other story.  Hmmmm.... What's a writer to do?  Perhaps it's time for a cooling off- I'll shelve it for a half year or so and then look if it's really any good.

So what about you, fellow bloglodytes?  You ever have story you really thought was good that no one wanted to touch?