Multiple Personality Syndrome

Introducing PHOENIX RENDELL, no need for applause. Okay, there wasn't any, oh well, more of a blip than a bang. After all this is not American Idol, more about that in a few paragraphs.

Lost amid the deep bog that is the second draft of my children's novel, The Evil Emporium, I've decided to use a pseudonym, a la Lemony Snicket. Phoenix is taken from the title of my horror novel 'The Maiden Phoenix', and Rendell is a family name.

Catherine J Gardner, talking about herself in the third person and feeling quite disconcerted, will continue to write short stories and plug away at her very dusty novels and may even attempt to write another horror novel, after all she does have three notebooks full of ideas.

And now onto the above mentioned, American Idol.

Today I read a thread on an online writing forum that suggested that many unpublished writers were like the disillusioned throngs who enter American Idol. Or The X-Factor for fellow Brits. Talentless and adding to the already swelling slush piles. No doubt. I'm not here to defend them or my own writing, heck until one of my novels is published, who am I to say whether I'm awful, mediocre, okay, or a genius. Ahem! And yes I do intend to clog up the slush piles for some time.

My point re American Idol/X-Factor is the difference in rejection. While theirs is loud and sometimes brutal and accompanied by a bucket load of tears and other emotions; rejection for the writer is much quieter. Not necessarily kinder, but without doubt quieter and often goes unnoticed. For me rejection is an A5 brown envelope, written in my own handwriting, with a form letter or compliment slip inside, followed by a weight sinking in my stomach. Then the compliment slip is filed away.

And nobody takes any notice at all. I can't decide if that's better than, or worse than, the outpouring of emotions that accompanies the slayings on television.