Yeah, I have a ton of accounts. This account change was necessary, though. As I've intimated in my profile, my old main account, The Deuteragonist, got banned last February. (Yes, this is like the seventh time I've gotten banned on here, and yes, this time I deserved it--I did some morally questionable stuff in November when Gaia was getting DDoSed because I was frustrated by their response to the situation. Let's leave it at that.) I'm actually still rather sad about that--that was one of my longest-lasting accounts, my longest-lasting main account that didn't get the hammer. Was almost seven years. Had a ton of gold and items in there, too, and a ton of memories.
Wow. I am so, so sorry that happened to you. That just seems so totally unfair. All that time and work down the shitter.
sad
And that thing about two computers blowing up is just horrible. I went nuts when my old laptop's hard drive crashed. Yeah, always back up your stuff, I learned the hard way. I can't imagine what it would be like for it to happen twice. Especially with all that material. So, so sorry to hear that.
Well, several things. I got accepted into the magazine not because I was a good writer (they didn't ask you to submit anything but a reading of a work of poetry/fiction), but because I was a good reader/critic, at least according to the chief editors. And then the staffers were predominantly fictionists, and the poets were, excluding me, people who had largely chosen to eschew rhyme and meter for their work. I have absolutely nothing against free verse, as you should know. In fact, I've written a good bit of my own. But my training is mostly in rhyme and meter, so is my aesthetic--while I certainly do appreciate writers like Louise Gluck and Jorie Graham and Marvin Bell, I grew up on Frost and Millay and Plath and Yeats and Eliot. My favorite free verse pieces are things that could get me into trouble with my rather conservative family if I sent them for publication under my real name (hint: it's the stuff I posted as Martin Gale). And it got a little lonely. Not to mention that I just enjoyed their work so damn much that I felt extremely inadequate. I'm not gonna lie, as much as I like reading your work, and other people's work on Gaia, this was another level. These people were all creative writing majors whose talent was at least the level of, say, Maj or Lied, and I don't say that lightly at all. I did submit many of my own works for deliberation. I got rejected every time except for once, and the one piece that got in was a rework of one of my pieces from 2011, which was a piece for a girl for whom I had feelings that have since flared out. (I'd call it a slight revision, but since the piece was so short it would probably count as a rework.)
(Every poet I know has had at least one writer destroy their ability to write. I can't remember specifics, but everyone told me at least that.)
Not to mention I did a lot of my best writing during class, because, not to boast, back in high school and even my first year of college I was actually smart enough to get away with that kind of thing. I couldn't do this in college. I got stuck in a degree program that I grew to loathe and was struggling even just to pass. Which was a shock for people who had never seen me struggle before. I was a pure mathematician at heart and by training, but got talked into taking quantitative finance even if I had no background in or taste for finance. I grew rather isolated too as a result because I was indulging in pure mathematics so that I could enroll in a graduate program. I had no academics, and no social life, just occasionally trying to keep up with my passions even with the work of my degree program killing them off.
All of these things killed my ability and desire to write, honestly.
Thanks for that assessment of my work, though. It means a lot to me, and I do enjoy your stuff too.
heart
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I know. I'm terrible at collabs.
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