I woke up feeling especially melancholy—for no real reason. I feel like I’m waiting for something. Like I’m counting on lightning to strike, and the chances of that are one in a million. Yet I’m still looking up, hoping to see a flash, wondering why it hasn’t yet come.
(Note: Actually the chances of being struck by lightning in the US, according to Wikipedia, which isn’t always wrong, are 1:280,000. Should that make me feel better?)
I finished the outline for the YA assignment and emailed it to the editors an hour ago. “Finished” is a funny word. I could have worked on that outline all weekend. For weeks, really. It’s establishing a whole new cast of characters and although I know them better than I did some days ago I could still know more…
Stop. It’s out of my hands now. Sort of freeing, really. (Also I have another freelance assignment to dive into this weekend.)
A coworker came by yesterday and asked how I liked having all these freelance assignments. I said I liked it a lot. But how about your “real” writing, she asked, how’s that going? And you and I know the truth: it’s not. I have no time. It’s so sad to say I have no time for my own stuff. I wonder if I made the right decision to do all this and then I think: it happened and it’s happening and there’s no going back now.
I hope to get back to my “real” writing soon. Maybe this weekend, in between things. Maybe the inspiration will take me by force and I won’t be able to stop myself. I’m going to hope for that.
Maybe I should say singed again.
About a month ago I had sent a query to an agent who had encouraged me—only she wanted to see a revised, and I wasn’t sure exactly how revised and how interested she’d be upon receiving it, if, theoretically, she ever did. I never heard back. So I did what any level-headed (at heart insecure) writer would do and wrote her off.
Now, today, I get an email from the agency. The agent had left the agency—that’s why I never heard back from her, I assume. Also, I can’t find any news about her whereabouts online. I don’t tihink she moved to another agency; there are usually postings about such things. So… I should be relieved that I didn’t spend a whole lot of time revising to (what I thought were) her specifications only to find she vanished into thin air, I guess. But it’s disappointing either way. You always like to think that at least one door is still open, even if you have no plans whatsoever to step through it.
This has happened to me before, once with an editor and another time with a junior agent. I can’t really file it under “rejection” but it’s a no more than a yes, I would think.
I’m feeling all contemplative and moody lately. I came home in the middle of the day to drop off my heavy computer, since I’ll be going out after work. On the way home an ambulance screamed through the traffic on Houston Street and all the yellow cabs pulled aside to let it go. The ambulance had to stop and start every few cars, its siren blazing. My ears almost punctured when it got held up beside me. But as I watched it go off, running a red light, I got all misty hoping whoever was counting on that ambulance would be okay. I had a lump in my throat for blocks afterward. I tell you, I’m not thinking clearly today.
distraction no.99 