Just for today, I’ve hit a quarter-note rest in the staccato rhythm that the writing project mamba has been thumping along in recently. Scallywags has gone to NYC for what will certainly be its 14th “thank you very much.” Remarkably though, 2 of the 13 publishers requested second, then third looks, and dialogued with me to the extent that I can’t convince myself it’s a waste of time to keep shipping it off (with the latest round of revisions.)
Meanwhile, Dewey (whose real name--for the moment anyway--is Hunting the Rose) has left the building on its maiden voyage in the hopes that one of the aforementioned dialoguers will take a gander at it.
And in that moment where I have shipped and can now do little but wait for the SASEs to find their way back to me, it’s time to pull out another blank slate, so to speak. It’s a banana paper, eco-friendly spiral notebook with a parrot on the cover--a cover which came slightly pre-mangled from Office Depot, but which I bought anyway because it was the only one, and it’s my personal idiosyncrasy that I must plan in a notebook that in some way inspires me. Plus, the mangled edge strikes me somehow as a karmic advantage, or a positive omen. Dang, anything to stay inspired. The parrot notebook is blank today, and will stay that way while I breathe for a bit. Then I must brainstorm in the way that I always do, and gradually patch together something--whether good or bad--from the strings of nonsense which float around, completely undisciplined, in my cranium.
There are times--many time actually--when I wonder by what ridiculous conceit I consider this continued pursuit of publication a calling. Because, in truth, the only conviction I have is that I must continue to write and continue to present the finished products to publishers. I feel no conviction whatsoever that I will succeed in the classic sense. So, yes, if I die having spent the rest of my life trying, I suppose I will have answered the call.
I may be every bit as deluded as the tone-deaf auditioners on American Idol who wail, upon rejection, that singing is the only thing they could possibly do in life. And if so, so be it.
I am particularly conscious of this possibility when I think about my sister and sister-in-law who rightfully should not have tushes at all if one considers how hard they work. I have voiced this, and been kindly reminded that “nobody would want my gig, anyway”(not referring to the writing life.) And I’m sure that’s true. So, perversely, I take a swig of comfort from that thought.
And anyway, I have a date with a banana paper notebook.
