It is too easy. . .

It is too easy to get discouraged. Thin envelopes with my own handwriting on them depress me. I know when they slip from the mess of catalogues and bills, it will be another rejection.

My head knows it's not a rejection of *me*. How could it be? These agents don't know me. They only have access to a smattering of my words. The start of a story, a query letter. A slim fraction of my work, and almost no sense of who I am.

My heart feels something utterly primal and undeniable.

I can argue with my heart from now until next Tuesday and it won't make it feel any better.

I am tired of reading cheery form letters that exhort me to keep trying, that the right agent for me is certainly just around the corner.

Sigh.

I'm enough of an optimist to get to that place on my own.

It just takes me a few days.

It would be simple to get discouraged, to give up this ridiculous dream of publication. But my traitor heart won't let me. Oh, it will wallow in it's own misery for a day or two, but it can't hold onto bitterness or despair for very long. Soon it will start whistling at odd moments when it doesn't think I'll notice.

And I'll fall in love with the way two words sound next to one another or how one character nudges another into action. Then it's the easiest thing in the world to believe.

Even in the most unlikely of dreams.