distraction no.99

How Easy It Can Be

Nova Ren Suma

January 23, 2006

This is how easy it can be for other people:

1. Decide one day: Hey, I am going to write a novel.

2. Write one draft of novel.

3. Show friends. (Must have friends in order to do this.)

4. Rewrite in, like, two weeks.

5. Decide: Hey, I am ready to get a literary agent.

6. Send book to three agents. Do not query, do not follow sample-chapter/SASE rules, just send the whole damn thing in and then call agents to boot.

7. Get three offers from three agents.

8. Mull over who you like best. Talk to other writers who are also looking for agents about how you have three people interested and ask them who you should choose. (It is not any of your concern that this may make the other writers contemplate burning their own novels and/or suicide.)

9. Pick agent.

10. Sit back and have agent sell book.

The above is a true story. I have seen it happen before; I am seeing it happen now. No, it is not happening to me.
What I Might Need in Order to Rewrite My Novel (Again)

Nova Ren Suma

January 21, 2006

1) A month off from work. I am not exaggerating; that’s how I did the last revision. And not just a month off from my full-time job, it was a month away from the frenzy of New York City, a month away from TV, a month away from the love of my life, which made it next to impossible to sleep nights, plus I was in a house all alone in the woods (it felt like it to me) and was afraid to go near the fireplace during the night and halfway through my visit found a door below my bed that led to what I assume was the boiler room that could be accessed from outside the house without any kind of lock, which completely and totally freaked me out and it was all I could do to get on the bed in the dark and stay there. I wrote mornings. I wrote afternoons. I skipped events, and a few times dinner, and wrote nights. This is what it took for me to get those 344 pages into the shape that they are now. I don’t know if I have it in me to do it again.

2) Other people. My perspective is shot. I see the book as it is, and only as it is, and that’s how it lives in my head, fully completed and grown. I am having a difficult time imagining it any other way. I would need people to read the thing and give me feedback. But not just any people. In my experience, people have let me down. They have not come through when I needed them. They did not help me in the way I needed to be helped. I have asked many people for help and they have said no. I have trusted people to read what I have written and they have not responded . . . ever. I have a tendency to be too trusting, and lately to protect myself I’ve walled up this tendency. Now I show most people nothing and a few people I like and respect a few things. E doesn’t count because he sees everything, but since he’s read my book at least three times I sometimes think he knows it better than me. So maybe the next one should be . . .

3) E. If I did a rewrite I would need E’s help more than he could imagine. Plot ideas. Edits. Inspiration. Understanding. Home-cooked pasta sauce with the zucchini the way I like it. Is he willing and able to live through another season of me revising this thing?

4) Cold hard cash. Because we are broke and this is not the time to be fiddling with a literary fiction manuscript, throwing blind story changes in to please some person who may not even like the new product anyway. Right now we need to pay the rent, plus eat and deal with credit cards and student loans and even if in the back of my mind a glimmer of fantasy pictures me quitting my current job to work on this thing, I know it can’t ever happen. (Guess how I wrote the very first draft? I quit a job to do it. Yeah, practical.) Sometimes I think the only thing that could save us is the Lotto fairy.

5) Patience. This is the great test of my life: wanting things right away and having to face the fact — time and time again — that I will not get them when I want them. I will have to wait. And I hate to wait. If I revise again it means extending the wait even longer.

6) Pharmaceuticals. Why did I quit doing drugs and drinking? Oh, right, I had this ridiculous idea of working hard and getting up mornings and being a writer. I didn’t want any distractions; I wanted a clear head. And just look where that landed me. What I need now is some kind of magical substance that will keep me from sleeping, keep me from procrastinating, force me to be inspired and write the Best Stuff Ever. What kinds of street drugs are out and about these days? Maybe there’s one like that.

7) Hope. Let it flow eternal. Because I need it right now.
The Nothing

Nova Ren Suma

January 18, 2006

This is my inbox:

And staring at it does nothing to help.
In Which the Universe Revolves Around Me

Nova Ren Suma

January 12, 2006

I was telling a coworker today that I think I am being tested.

She leaned in, eyes wide, By who? she said.

I waved my hands to indicate everything and everyone around us.

She whispered: By the Powers That Be here at [Our Company]?

And I’m like, Oh no, I mean the universe. The universe is testing me, not the publisher.

Just the universe then? she said.

But then we agreed that was much worse.

My coworker said she doesn’t think she’s being tested right now because I seem to be going through a lot more than she is so more likely she’s just stressed.

I told her maybe she could be tested next. The universe is all hers, as soon as she wants it.

Thanks, she said.

Anytime, I said.

(Universe? I am on to you.)
Always Close, Never a Cigar

Nova Ren Suma

October 12, 2005

I have asked E to block unexpected rejection letters, as he’s the one who usually gets to the mailbox first. He’ll hide them somewhere in the apartment to bring out at times when my skin is thicker, when I can handle hearing the continuous chorus of No’s a little better.

Early this morning I had a feeling. He was asleep, the rain was pounding—a continuous sheet of it out the window—and I was actually on time for work for once. I had an inkling: There is a rejection letter somewhere in this room. I went to a popular spot on the bookshelf and saw it hidden between two How-To books: that white business-size envelope with my name and address in my own handwriting on the front. The dreaded SASE. One side was opened, as I had asked E to screen them: if good, pass them on. If bad, leave them for later. Obviously, since this one was left for later, it was a bad one.

Part of me wished I hadn’t read it so early in the morning. Or at all.
The Many Faces of No

Nova Ren Suma

October 10, 2005

No to my face is a no.

No in a letter or an email is a no that cannot be taken back. Once a no is in writing, it’s forever a no.

But there is also the silent no. A yes postponed so long you just assume it’s a no. I get these more than any other. And I’m naive, and innocently hopeful. Sometimes I think a no is really a yes and that it’ll all turn around once it’s spoken aloud.

Then I get the letter, or the phone call—the no-calls are the worst—and I’m back at square 1.
On the Street, a Poet

Nova Ren Suma

August 31, 2005

On the way in to work this morning I ran into a poet on the street. I knew her from this past winter, when we were at a writers colony together. She asked how my writing was going since I left the colony. I said it wasn’t going. And she shook her head, said Oh, said my name, just looked at me. As if in terrible disappointment.

Yeah, it’s true. I am a disappointment.

The other truth is that I saw her first on the corner and pretended I didn’t see her. I guess the reminder of what my “real life” is was too much and I didn’t want to talk about it, have her ask me the question she asked me, have to admit I really haven’t written since I got home. But she started calling my name, and I had to pretend to be surprised, and I stopped, and chatted, and ending up being late for work.

It could be a good thing, a reminder of what else is out there beyond my everyday existence. Or it could be a reprimand for being so lazy and not working hard enough at what I am supposed to do.

Either way, she walked away, looking healthy, happy, having written I’m sure that very morning. I should say that she is immensely talented. I loved her poems. She continued on east, and I continued on south, and I wonder if I’ll ever be what I keep saying I am.