Yeah, not feeling it.

This is why I do not and cannot think of my self as that wondrous being called "a writer." There are days--such as today--when I really, truly just can't write anything of substance. I can blather, as I do here in these blog posts; I can do the verbal equivalent of noodling. But I can't dig into either coming up with something new (another story, another chapter in the novel) or working with something that already exists (revising, oh, anything). My brain just won't let me go there.

I did spend a little time doing some revising of the personal essay I'm working on, and I may be a tiny bit closer to having something reasonably well put together there, but I'm now wondering whether I want to publish the thing at all. Again, how personal is too personal?

For the record, when I submitted my two short-stories to The Masters Review, I thought I had submitted one to the fall contest and one to the "New Voices" segment. Apparently I submitted both to the fall contest--I think I may have said something about the very nice rejection email I got--and I did, as I thought, submit one also to "New Voices": I got a much less lovely rejection for that one the other day.

But thinking, "OK, I'll hunt around for somewhere else to send it for rejection" also got me thinking about the title--and the epigraph. The story is about a young man of Native heritage and his unrequited love for a woman he works with. His being Native has little bearing on the story, however; it's simply an interesting little character detail. Nevertheless, the story is titled after the Hank Williams song "Kaw-Liga," and the epigraph is the first verse of the song, and goes like this:

Kaw-liga was a wooden Indian standing by the door.

He fell in love with an Indian maiden over in the antique store. 

Kaw-liga just stood there and never let it show, 

So she could never answer "yes" or "no."

And yeah, that's a pretty serious racial stereotype: cigar-store Indians are considered pretty offensive these days, for I think understandable reasons.

So the question of the day, kiddies, is this: should I retitle the story, do away with the epigraph, and remove the mention of the song in the story? Is my story tainted as racist by association? I don't think it's any better if I just omit the first two lines of the verse: anyone who knows the Hank Williams song will know the racist reference (and anyone who doesn't can very easily look it up, as I have to say where the epigraph came from).

As I'm blathering about this, I'm beginning to think I'll change the title and remove the song references. The story certainly doesn't need them, and I do think the "offensive by proxy" charge would have enough merit to stick.

So, yeah: I can "feel" that much.