Happy New You Part IV

Long overdue for an update to my blog profile. I've been confusing people with the whole book burning thing.

So here's me, modestly refreshed:

Me: mother, wife and writer watching 40 climb the front steps like a peddler pushing time and me with nowhere to hide. The writer part used to come first, the 40 used to be a 30, and marriage and motherhood were abstract activities I thought I’d try someday. Ah, growing up. If only it was the thrill promised when we were six.

I started this blog to chronicle my quest to publish a book. I’ve published all sorts of other things—articles, essays, even poetry. I wrote a first book. Then I set it on fire. I am now neck-deep in edits on a second book, and have a publisher interested. But as my mother says, “It ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings.”

So the question remains—will I bloom, eventually? Or will I ditch the whole writing thing, adopt a xanax habit, abandon my own identity and live the rest of my life vicariously through my children? Hmm, let’s find out.

Hurts So Good

My writing group friends agree: there is such a thing as a “good” rejection letter.

As I have reported in the past (Boomerang), an unfortunately much-too-common rejection letter in the publishing industry is no rejection letter—no response at all, which has the result of making one feel like pond scum, or worse, invisible pond scum.

Far too much of the time when I send one of my essay-babies off to publishing-land, it vanishes with barely a whisper of the mouse button never to be heard from again. After a several weeks, I assume it dead, or at least terminally neglected.

Which brings us to a good rejection letter. The qualities of said precious item convey that one’s slaved-over words were a) actually read by a fellow human being b) admired in some stated way and c) deemed worthy of a few sentences of semi-thoughtful reply.

Here’s a lovely rejection I received the other day.

Dear Kim,
Thank you for sending “The Why Season.” I’m sorry to take so long to reply.
I enjoyed reading your essay and found it both funny and touching. However, I must report that we’ve decided to give it a pass, as we recently published an essay on a similar topic and don't yet feel ready to revisit the subject. I wish you the best of luck placing this piece elsewhere.

Gee, isn’t that nice? Of course we should not overlook the fact that it’s a big fat no. But why dwell on that when we can bask in the weak filtered light of its approval? Sigh. I feel so warm and fuzzy inside.

WWMD?

Malcolm Gladwell’s article in the May 11 New Yorker is titled “How David Beats Goliath.” The topic is how underdogs win by breaking the rules and supplanting ability with effort.

“We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity,” he writes. “It’s the other way around. Effort can trump ability because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than ability.”

This is what one hears at writer’s conferences all of the time. Don’t give up. Keep writing, keep submitting.

A good friend (one with an agent and a book coming out, incidentally) told me the other day that she thinks I got bad advice from my marketing consult (see Book Burning Take 2). If I truly believe in my project, she said, I should keep submitting. She sent out her stories 200 times before she got a book deal.

Actually, her exact words were: “Tell everyone who doesn’t believe in your book to suck it.”

What will happen next? Stay tuned for the next installment of “As the Memoir Turns.”

Yippee Ki Yi Yay

If writing were riding, I’d have fallen off the horse and landed in the ER more than once. I seem inclined to cling, stumble, plummet to the ground: Then get back up, like some sort of indomitable horse-loving fool. (Or head-injured, masochistic fool—you decide).

Here I am: back in the saddle.

In an effort to get back on the trail, this week I have:

• Submitted an essay to the NY Times’ Lives page


• Pulled out my children’s book manuscript and read it to the chickens (they love it. They giggle and ask for more. Too bad they aren’t publishers), identifying weak areas to work on.


• Brainstormed a YA novel idea. Do I know how to write YA? No. Do I even know how to write fiction? No. Does that matter right now? No.


• Sunk my teeth back into the paid work I neglected during book edits (newspaper article writing, magazine copyediting, exhibit copywriting)


• Blogged. (OK, I always blog. But it’s got to count for something)

So: enough with the life analysis and on with the living, already. I’ll keep you posted, unless the NY Times calls, in which case I’ll be doing cartwheels in the yard and drinking champagne. Possibly simultaneously.

Look What I Made Today!

Chicken Little keeps catching me putting her drawings in the recycling bin.

She never once considers that I’ve done it on purpose. She always assumes it’s been a mistake.

“Mommy, you accidentally put this in there,” she says, holding it out to me. “Whoops!” I say, and stick it back on the refrigerator.

This is an innocence I covet desperately. Oh, to be so certain that everything you’ve created will be unconditionally cherished.

On my hard drive are three distinct drafts of my book. The first two I offered to the world like Libby offers her art, with faith that it would bring back some of the love I’d put into it. Both were loved by several someones. Each was rejected by more someones.

That’s just life as a grown-up.

The funny thing is, despite hard-earned appreciation for the harshness of reality and all, I still have a glimmer of that innocent, hopeful kid in me. Without that kid, I wouldn’t keep doing this probably. I sure as heck wouldn’t be on draft four.

Maybe I’ll just move Noodle’s art from the fridge to a big gigantic pile in the closet, clearing out of the way clothes and old books and umbrellas, keeping and loving every single crayon masterpiece forever.

It’s the least I could do, really.

Guts

Simply mentioning my book for the first time in months set off an internal maelstrom capped by complete panic in the grips of which I considered quitting writing and getting a job at the mall.

This reaction would be amusing if it weren’t so predictable. Since the first, seamless, innocent draft, the thought of editing my manuscript has sent me into spinning anxiety.

I can never decide no matter how much I prod my mind and my soul if this anxiety is a normal reaction to a monumental task like writing a book or a sign that I shouldn’t be writing this particular book.

I recently read in the New Yorker that David Foster Wallace said, “the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies in being willing to sort of die in order to move the reader.” I don’t purport to be on his level (nor end like him), and he wrote fiction, but I will be brave enough to suggest that this statement might be even truer when one is writing memoir.

When I think about what I will have to scrutinize, parse out and reveal about myself to make this book truly good, it kind of makes me want to throw up. It’s exciting to think that this could be possible and moving to an audience, and terrifying to think about how difficult it will be and how, should I fail, I will have simply laid my guts out on the table to be picked apart by vultures.

Free the French Fries!

During the last of three layovers that Chicken Noodle and I endured on our journey home from Hawaii, I ordered us dinner in an airport brewpub. When the meals arrived, I reached over and snatched a French fry off of Noodle’s plate and stuck it in my mouth.

Little did I know this simple act would send my overtired child directly to crazy-land.

“I want my French fry!” she wailed. “I want my French fry back!”

Never mind that she had roughly 35 similar French fries on her plate. She wanted that one: the one that got away, the one lost for eternity, the one elevated to idolatry and lament from today into forever just because it had disappeared.

It took twenty minutes of cajoling and a bit of fakery to convince her to get over it.

What is it that makes some of us hold on to things long past their service to us? Why do we obsess about unfinished business? Observing this nuclear meltdown in my child, I wondered: what is my French fry?

Perhaps it is my unpublished book, which I cling to like a deflating life raft, though if only I turned to look I might spot a perfectly superior boat approaching.

I'd love to hear all y'all's french fries, too. Call today Free the French Fries Monday.

Writer's High

Yesterday I submitted three essays to magazines. Last week, I submitted another to a contest.

It’s amazing how after all of this time the submitting part of the writer’s equation still feels so great. Even though cognitively I know that the odds are stacked against me and that the most likely result is dreaded rejection, submitting still gives me a tiny little high.

This stems from the pride of having put something together, polished it and wrangled it into submitting status; from the satisfaction of having searched for magazines/websites/anthologies who publish essays like the ones I write, read through their submission requirements and dutifully obeyed.

But the kicker is that at the point that I stick my words in the mailbox or hit the send key on an email, anything is possible. I have prepared and I have entered the race; that alone is enough to make me feel alive. The results are delightfully unknown; success seems as likely as failure. It is the thrill of this possibility that gives the high.

What if? What if the New York Times published my essay? How outstanding would that feel?

Yes, I know that there are 10,000 entries a week; it doesn’t matter, for this very moment, before the days start to tick by with no response, before the finality of a rejection shows up in my inbox, winning is still possible.

That possibility is hope and hope is the primary reason we keep doing anything at all.

Adapt and Overcome!

I’ve just spent an hour identifying eight new publishers to submit my children’s book manuscript to (must get back on the bus!), and am feeling chagrined about my rant of last post. Namely, because now I recall that there are warnings all over the listings in Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market that some publishers, when uninterested, will simply not respond.

It’s still a sorry state of affairs, in my opinion. But I recognize that it is much easier (and far less useful) to rant than to simply accept the conditions one must work under and persevere anyway.

“Adapt and overcome!” my wise step-father has begun to declare at the tiniest sign of challenge. I will submit these eight and try not to take personally the absolute nothingness that might (or might not! must remain hopeful!) follow.