I just looked through/reread the short story I wrote for my contract, the long one, that I like more than the others and worked out really well. This is the one I was thinking about making a copy of the version I have printed out now and submitting it places. And then I found typos and grammatical errors and felt my confidence plummet. I'll have to print out the fixed versions for submissions, but just the fact that I found these errors now is disconcerting.

Tomorrow I'll go and hand in all these things, have the meetings with faculty and all that. Perhaps I will take this story with the errors fixed, print it out, and place it into a yellow envelope I bought for just such an occasion, and then perhaps that story will be placed into the mail.

There is almost assuredly rejection in my future but there is rejection in my past as well. I am a fuckup.

Goddamn but I've skirted saying McSweeney's because it feels like some kind of actual-life equivalent of a nerd asking out a cheerleader. But I mean: yes.

The story has its moments. That's true for all that I've written for the independent contract. Everything has its moments, nothing's consistent. This is just the piece where the overall collection of moments is at its most impressive.

I feel sick.