I'm about to turn in my draft to the editors for the next issue of our school newspaper, and this is the big one because it's our annual "420" themed issue. We usually have loosely-based themes for every month but this one we try to keep it as marijuana-user-friendly as possible. This is the issue that is the most widely read out of any other issue out of the entire year so it's quite important to have your work published in any part of the paper. I really wanted to try for center spread or one of the larger, main articles (I only had a small column last time) so I decided to take a stab at it.

I don't know how I feel about it. Maybe I aimed way too high for such an unattainable goal. I should've just wrote for the smaller column because that's all I'm good at. I read my draft out loud several times but it sounds stupid. I don't know. My main problem was that I didn't know which direction to take for the narrative, if that makes sense. There are so many directions you can go with a personal narrative that includes a dialogue or just a personal revelation, and I was completely stuck for 2 days. I woke up early this morning to finish the draft, but I feel as though the tone isn't right, or just isn't good enough. I was told main page articles were between 800-1000 words but I'm only at 770. It's too long for a smaller 500-600 word editorial, but maybe a little too short for a large center spread. Who knows. If they like the content of it, maybe I can go into production today and add some more stuff to it, but I doubt I'd even make it to the second round. This feeling of impending doom from rejection sucks. It really does.

I feel like I was just extremely lucky with that first article. It was pure luck. The newspaper is so hard to please, and everyone is so difficult to impress. I feel so inadequate every time I write something for them. Ugh. I wanted to try so hard to be able to have a spot for this month's issue because it's supposed to be the most important one of the quarter. :(

Maybe I just don't have what it takes to do this. Who knows.

Bleh.