Reading this crap from you always makes me so angry and frustrated. You are so much better than the shit-bar you set yourself to. I have down moments, but Jesus, if my thought patterns were this low, all the time, for everything I would be looking for help--there's low and then there's rock bottom all the time.

This sort of frame of mind isn't healthy for you or anyone around you.

Blaming everyone else for things out of their control and yours is ridiculous--it's like saying it's your fault New Orleans flooded or lightening struck someone's house.

Go app somewhere else. You are SO willing to give up the MOMENT there is even a WHIFF of rejection(even BEFORE you start)--what's the point of doing anything? If shit were easy and you were guaranteed to win every god damn time there's be no point to anything. No one would do anything. THERE WOULD BE NO D&D. THINK OF THE D&D CHILDREN.

Your argument that I shouldn't believe that things will always suck and go wrong would be more well-timed had it not come the same day I found out I had to shell out $500 for tigerphoenix's car, out of nowhere. ^.^

Did moving in with tigerphoenix suck and go wrong? If the answer is "no" then your "always" counter-argument is entirely invalid. What did you do when your novel was rejected by one company? Did you stop submitting it altogether? Or did you send it to another publisher hoping they might think differently about it than the other one?

You and I have always differed on the viability and validity of directly submitting works to publishers. My position on that hasn't changed and has nothing to do with negativity.

As for moving in, it's certainly true that there is absolutely no foreseeable way for us to move out of this basement and get married.

I never said anything about directly submitting your work. You prefer an agent. Didn't you tell me that you found one and submitted something somewhere but got rejected? Or did you send it to an agent and he/she rejected you before it even had a chance to be sent to a publisher?

This is you not answering my questions, which leads me only to assume that the answers are: "Yes." "I gave up." "Yes." And then, "No." In which case I'm just going to have to side with Mel on this one.

That wasn't a nonanswer, that was me misunderstanding the level of information you had. I went through an entire database of agents, actually. I don't know how many it was know, but I'd be willing to guess it was around fifty all told.