esme

Ok, weirdest thing:

So I applied to this very froufy writers' conference called Bread Loaf, because my adviser told me I should. I put the application in the mail on the scholarship postmark deadline (because that's how I roll). My poetry manuscript (I applied in both fiction and poetry) was made up of about half poems from this project I'd been working on for about a year, and half other stuff, stuff from before, maybe somewhat revised since whenever "before" was. A week or two after I put it in the mail, I met with my adviser about this project I'd been working on for a year, which she hadn't seen before. She told me it was not my best work (her words). Ouch. And double ouch, since I'd just put some of those eggs in a rather important basket. Since then I've been working on stuff that is just completely different, and which she likes, and more importantly, I like. And I keep saying to myself, yeargh, if only the BL app had been due a month later.

Flash forward. On their website, BL states that all decision letters are mailed on May 25th. I think this is very nice of them. Aside from the speed of mail, no one will know anything before anyone else. So color me a little disturbed when I find a letter from them in my box yesterday, especially since I'd previously been contacted by email by the applications administrator to tell me one of my apps was missing a page. But of course they know us crazy writers, so someone had written "a question about your application" (ie, this is NOT a decision letter) across the flap. Okay. So according to the letter, UPS lost a packet of manuscripts, including mine. (From what I understand, all the apps go through Vermont, then get split up and sent to various judges around the country to be...judged.) So, either on its way there or its way back, some judge's packet went missing (along with everyone's email address, apparently.) I read the letter quickly and then put it in my backpack since I was late to work, the whole time scheming that if it was my poetry app, maybe I could get away with sending them different poems. Then I started feeling really guilty for thinking that, not to mention sure I'd be caught. I'm always sure I'll be caught. About anything. THEN I got home and read the letter again and noticed a parenthetical in the middle of it saying that if we want to change or revise our manuscript, that fine. w00t. Then I figured with my luck it was probably the fiction app that was lost. THEN I wrote to the admin and she wrote me back and said it's the poetry one. double w00t.

So, this is just so weird and I have this ridiculous fantasy/irrational suspicion that my adviser could have something to do with it. Because she's the one who told me to apply, and she's a judge--presumably she's not my judge because I put her down as a reference and it seems like they would catch on that that would be a conflict of interests...but at the same time, she might have made connection that I probably sent at least some of this "not my best work" work, and now she's all excited about my new work and she thinks it would get accepted but the other work wouldn't and, and...that wouldn't happen, right? It's just too heavily orchestrated. I mean, in my crazy imagination, it could be that the thing about UPS is a lie, that no one else got this letter, that the thing about not having my email is also a lie, but that they wanted to make it look good and so they made up this whole story instead of just saying, "Hey, Esme, we lost your app. Will you send it again? And revise it if you want." I'm totally insane. Insane, I tell you. Anyway, after all this, I'm going to feel super salty if I don't get in. Oh, well.