Write! Write! Write! I suppose this is what an inspiring unpublished novelist like myself should live and breath to do. To read voraciously, write incessantly. Well suppose I don't feel like writing. Suppose I don't feel like forming a cohesive sentence with eloquent language to impress some literary professional long enough for them to tell me that they are willing to represent me to publishers.
Suppose I don't feel like sitting for hours at a laptop to string paragraphs and thoughts and scribed images along just to satiate my need to create and a readers need for stimulation. What if I feel like sitting and staring at four walls when my creative juices go toxic and need purging with a little positive reinforcement - dare I say praise for a job well done.
Fuck it, I say. I don't feel like writing. My heart is wounded; my desire to re-enter the world of my characters and their environs ain't tugging at my heart strings, nor is my inspiration to re-join them burning. I miss them, yes. I love them, too. But what good is writing when the efforts of the hours, the missed dinners, the late nights, yields nothing but the rejection form letters from holier-than-thou literary agents who delete my query letters. I'm an unknown. A new author. Unpublished. A literary newcomer from the ranks of the great unwashed who seek to share their stories, only to be chastened by the shunning of literary giants.
It would be fine by me if everyone said my writing lacks what it takes to enter the published market. But my editor is willing to write a blurb for my book and he's an award winning, best selling author. He said it took him three years to be represented. But he's an English teacher. I'm a horse person. Not a college graduate in English literature or creative writing. Hell, I never took a remedial class on the studied works of dysfunctional lesbian authors who made good.
Since I have little collegiate credentials, maybe I should write about my life. I've got a story there. Write about how I ran away from home at age nine because I wanted to live out west and raise a bull calf. Something that was impossible to do in 1960's Englewood, New Jersey. Maybe someone would be interested to read about my anti-war activities and how I volunteered in the breakfast programs with the Harlem chapter of the Black Panther Party when I was in 10th grade. And how I caught the number 84 bus from the GWB bus station to get back to Dwight Morrow High School before my first class at 8:00 a.m. My parents never knew a thing.
Wow. I wonder if anyone would care to read about my college days at then West Virginia State College in Institute, West Virginia (WV being my ancestral home). I bet no one knew that I was nearly date raped, not once but twice in my dorm by guys I knew and considered my friends. I should have kicked their asses. I guess I didn't have to since I told them they would have to kill me before I would let them "stick it in".
I left. Burned and jaded about college. So I worked at WCHS-TV in Charleston, a CBS affiliate station. Humph! I guess that's where my writing career began since I was a copy writer for the local commercial spots. Hated that job, too. Loved to read though.
Read Reverend Moon's Divine Principle. I did after someone met me at a bookstore (duh!) in downtown Charleston. Joined the "Moonies"(I fucking hate that pejorative) in 1973. Sold my horse. Six months later, got four more. I taught Rev. Moon's children how to ride once I move to upstate New York.
I was more into painting than writing. Took some art classes at a community college. Helped edit student papers. Idiots couldn't write to save their Master's Degree butts. Got some of my poetry published in an anthology, my first real published works.
Got engaged to a white guy from Minnesota. Not a college man either. A farm boy and as innocent as they come. Wrote about that and got published in several church magazines. Got married at Madison Square Garden by Rev. Moon in a mass marriage. Good times, good times.
Lots of changes. Lots of travels. The pits and the peaks. Four kids, four dogs, and about a dozen horses later, we live in upstate New York and I'm still trying to get published as a novelist.
Write! Write! Write! I'm damn sick of it. I should have written about the real tragedies. Editors love that. How I missed my father's last sickly days and how I never got to say good-bye. They would love to read how my husband and I had to cut my nephew's body down after he had hanged himself from a basement pipe. I'll never forget the blue-black color of death on his face.
Had to bury my mother, too. I held her hand twelve hours before she passed. I missed her last moments, too. But that not what upset me. Some fat slob of a women in my church said to me hours later, "Let the dead bury the dead," quoting Jesus Christ in her self-righteous, cold-as-ice, heartless way. Bitch.
How about the days of chemo when I had breast cancer and refused to wear a wig while I taught riding lessons with my bald headed self. As soon as I finished radiation and was going to fly to Korea for a respite, I had a dream that my younger sister had died. The phone call came from my niece seven minutes later in the middle of the night. My sister was dead for real. Drugs and alcohol overdose. Saw her spirit ascending when I was in Korea. Wow.
Yep, I bet editors would love to hear more of that stuff. So here I am, trying o get published. Worrying about my health, worrying that my days are numbered and I'll have nothing to leave behind when I go.
I think deep down that I'm worrying for nothing. I get published and then what? Another book? Then another book? Would be great, but of all the stories that I could flush out of my imagination, my reality might be a better read. But that would bore me to tears.
I'm still with the Unification Church with all its traumas related to dramas since Rev. Moon passed. The caretaker home my family has lived in for the last 20 years is being sold. Fine. I'm ready to get out of New York anyway. Love the state, hate the assholes in the government. Setting my sights on Pennsylvania. I like what I see in the Poconos and so does my family. New home, new friends, new adventures. I just hope I survive the stress of moving day upheaval.
Having to start anew never bothers me though. It's having to write, write, write to impress readers that sometimes pisses me off. I can't sleep. I don't feel like it when a thought train rolls into my creative station. So here I am, sitting at this damn laptop at 12:10 a.m. writing, writing, writing.
Got engaged to a white guy from Minnesota. Not a college man either. A farm boy and as innocent as they come. Wrote about that and got published in several church magazines. Got married at Madison Square Garden by Rev. Moon in a mass marriage. Good times, good times.
Lots of changes. Lots of travels. The pits and the peaks. Four kids, four dogs, and about a dozen horses later, we live in upstate New York and I'm still trying to get published as a novelist.
Write! Write! Write! I'm damn sick of it. I should have written about the real tragedies. Editors love that. How I missed my father's last sickly days and how I never got to say good-bye. They would love to read how my husband and I had to cut my nephew's body down after he had hanged himself from a basement pipe. I'll never forget the blue-black color of death on his face.
Had to bury my mother, too. I held her hand twelve hours before she passed. I missed her last moments, too. But that not what upset me. Some fat slob of a women in my church said to me hours later, "Let the dead bury the dead," quoting Jesus Christ in her self-righteous, cold-as-ice, heartless way. Bitch.
How about the days of chemo when I had breast cancer and refused to wear a wig while I taught riding lessons with my bald headed self. As soon as I finished radiation and was going to fly to Korea for a respite, I had a dream that my younger sister had died. The phone call came from my niece seven minutes later in the middle of the night. My sister was dead for real. Drugs and alcohol overdose. Saw her spirit ascending when I was in Korea. Wow.
Yep, I bet editors would love to hear more of that stuff. So here I am, trying o get published. Worrying about my health, worrying that my days are numbered and I'll have nothing to leave behind when I go.
I think deep down that I'm worrying for nothing. I get published and then what? Another book? Then another book? Would be great, but of all the stories that I could flush out of my imagination, my reality might be a better read. But that would bore me to tears.
I'm still with the Unification Church with all its traumas related to dramas since Rev. Moon passed. The caretaker home my family has lived in for the last 20 years is being sold. Fine. I'm ready to get out of New York anyway. Love the state, hate the assholes in the government. Setting my sights on Pennsylvania. I like what I see in the Poconos and so does my family. New home, new friends, new adventures. I just hope I survive the stress of moving day upheaval.
Having to start anew never bothers me though. It's having to write, write, write to impress readers that sometimes pisses me off. I can't sleep. I don't feel like it when a thought train rolls into my creative station. So here I am, sitting at this damn laptop at 12:10 a.m. writing, writing, writing.
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