winter cold like a dog bite

winter is long shadows, the day always ending. a greyness dulls me down. and for the realist who feels like a representationalist, nothing happens. there is a cold day. and another. and then another. and so, little happens on the page except that continuing blankness that is winter. i've been thinking a lot about confidence. to write well, i have to be really confident. there's no other way. you have to believe that what you're putting down, whatever it is, is something that needs to be there, has to be communicated, some story unheard, some words unread. but winter, the small warm rooms, that stopped-time, heavy blankets and sweaters, a colder you, it allows for way way way too much thinking. and so rejections pile up and, yeah, my confidence has been a bit shaken the last month or two. which is okay, necessary. i got a rejection on my novel manuscript, not a real personal word in it. i think the manuscript was out for five months or so and i got the rejection new year's eve. not the best day for a rejection, especially one so impersonal (which is basically like saying 'no, badness'). and yet, yet....this the time, that hour, when the day is short and blue with long shadows, the sky is a sickly pale grey, and there are sirens, or too much time alone, or too much time with other people, or there's a man on a bike some sleeting night, asking you for money, pleading, gloveless and hatless in the cold, and when you tell him you have nothing, he scoffs at you, maybe even spits, and you have to think this is fair, and find some way back to the page.