"Seventy percent of the world is covered in water, and the other thirty percent is covered in people who want to be writers." - Laura Resnick

I feel a little like a child who's just pried the safety plate from an outlet and is trying to decide which implement to jam inside. There are hair pins enough in every room of the house that the choice seems obvious, at least.

Though I wasn't sure what to expect, I risked being stranded following the rapture at the Clear Creek Writers' conference, 'Confessions of a Working Writer.' Laura Resnick delivered the keynote and delivered me unto creative salvation. She was candid and cool and my hair might as well have been standing on end for how charged I felt after hearing her speak, and daring to go and speak to her. I've felt more than a little helpless, a little reckless - maybe my finger goes in that socket, yeah? - querying seemingly for the sake of increasing my misery, but Laura urged us to take control of our careers as writers, to help make the rules when we must play by them, and for fuck's sake to put down the pin and pick up the pen.

On a break I escaped to the patio of the historic home where the conference was held and leapt to the spongy lawn below, current conducted down through my shoes into earthworm jazz. I tried to call M to tell him what she'd said, what she'd made me feel, but when I couldn't reach him I simply grinned, lips a lightning-slash and hot from talk.

It's not just that rejection can't unwrite what I've written. It can't unmake me, or what I want.