An online literary journal...

I am thinking about the idea of creating an online literary journal through a blog, where friends can post things and we can all comment... Maybe for over the summer, or something. Like an online workshop. Somewhere to get some feedback. 

I'll have to think about it though, it all gets murky about whether that would be considered published or not... I really don't know if it would qualify or not. I mean, nobody reads my blog, but still, I wouldn't want to jeopardize anyone else's chance of being published. 

I am considering sending something out soon. I just don't know if I am ready for a canned rejection of my work. I don't have a fabulous writing self esteem, and I can't imagine how very much I would cry when I get my first rejection slip. Some people in my workshop seem to have such confidence in their work, and I don't seem to have any at all. (I don't really, deep down, think that I am terrible. I just don't think I am particularly good.)

I think that maybe I need to just pretend it isn't my work, but that I am acting as an agent for my second personality, or something. I know it sounds crazy, but perhaps if it isn't me that I wait on pins and needles for, then I'll stay moderately sane about the entire thing. I can't even quite call myself a writer without being vaguely embarrassed, as if I were a child with a nose picking problem, caught with a finger in my nose. I can't quite explain why it makes me embarrassed. It has a lot to do with proof, I believe. I can't really prove it. That I'm a writer. I have no clippings to show, no money made. I think that in my logical, analytical world at work, I always require proof from others. So I feel ashamed that I've none to give, I guess. 

So I require proof. What really defines a writer, though? Is it simply being published? Well, that can't really be it, can it? There are loads of writers that have been published posthumously. I suppose I'll just have to think about it. Maybe I just need to reevaluate what I think a writer really constitutes. Maybe I don't really need to send work out. I can just write and wait to die, hoping that someone will send it out after I'm dead. Perhaps that would be ideal, in any case.