Peter's Cross Station

I Love Rob Brezsny

My horoscope for the week:

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): On behalf of all us non-Aquarians, I'd like to
express our appreciation for the experiments you've been performing.
Please don't be discouraged just because the results thus far have been
inconclusive and left you feeling a trifle rudderless. We feel confident that 
sooner or later you'll come up with discoveries that will have bottom-line
value to both you and the rest of us. We'd also like to apologize for the
shortsighted and timid types among us who are accusing you of being
unrealistic or overly optimistic. Please keep trying those novel approaches
and making those imaginative forays.

Most excellent for the week in which I received my second agent rejection.

But let's be honest.  The book wasn't ready.  60K words in eight weeks is impressive and all, but come on, obviously it's not a final draft.  I have officially cooled my query jets and gotten back to the book itself in a serious way, following up some super helpful feedback from some super smart and encouraging (but usefully critical) readers.  Now I'm 6K words heavier (so far) and the thing is getting richer by the hour.

After I sat back and gave it a good proofing, I realized that what I instantly had was a decent romance novel.  Which is great, seeing as writing a romance novel was my original plan.  Except that as I wrote it it grew into something more complex than a romance novel--at least I decided I wanted it to grow into something more complex.  In which case, it needs meat on its bones.  My readers have really spurred my thinking about what kind meat and where to put it.  So I'm doing mostly that now, though I did do an easy email agent query this morning on a lark.

The rejection doesn't bother me.  I've just decided that querying agents I don't have an actual personal introduction to is like throwing darts blindfolded.  Either I will hit the right one or I won't, but the more I throw, the better the odds.

So, you wanna know what's more complex about the book now?  As I was writing it, about a gazillion more little stories started spinning off of it in my head.  I have a strong outline of the immediate sequel, plus a strong idea of a related, concurrent story set tangentially to the main action and characters of this first one.  I have a third idea which will be another immediate sequel focused on the twin sister of the main character of the sequel I've already outlined.

What I have on my hands is a full-blown family saga in the making.  The twist (and the difficult marketing angle) is that's its a queer family saga.  That is, not every character is gay, but several characters are literally queer in a sexuality or gender way, and the family itself is based on a female-female couple of progenitors (okay with a reproductive leg up via a brief heterosexual marriage).  Meanwhile I've also got a not-as-rare-as-people-think-but-certainly-underrepresented-in-pop-culture Black/white interracial marriage (circa 1899) and its offspring.  Then there are the celibate nuns and their special friendships across time and eternity and well...it's a queer family saga.

I have no doubt you and everybody you know will not be able to put it down.  But I have to find an agent who is convinced she can convince Random House (or you know, Simon and Schuster or whoever will give me the most gigantic contract) of this.

Hand me a few more darts...

Quick Update

Rushing around, but for those of you who aren't on Facebook, or haven't "friended" me there (go do so, now!  Photos of the kids await you!), wanted to let you know that I did indeed get the big no from my first agent.  I have already sent a new query off to the next one on my short list.  Meanwhile, I learned that I made it past only about a 5% cut by getting the initial interest of that first agent, so that is actually quite reassuring.

I also kinda had to admit to myself that I have a lot of work yet to do on the manuscript, so I'm doing that while I wait to hear from Number Two.

More soon.  This is a crazy week, during which most of my dedicated work time is getting eaten up by meetings and appointments.  Bleagh.  Hate it when that happens.

Midlife Crisis

Back in February, I turned 39 and immediately fell off the cliff of a midlife crisis.  To be specific, I reflected that I had done nothing much in the first half of my life but prepare for doing things later.  Having arrived at later, it seemed to me I really ought to be doing something now that could be neatly summarized if, at a cocktail party, someone were to ask me What I Do.

I have never been able to answer that question in a word, a phrase or a even anywhere near a single sentence and I still can't.  But I suddenly felt the dire need to be able to do so by the time I hit 40.

Cole thought this was really silly (what does she know?  She's 52), insisting that I couldn't answer the question neatly because I am far too interesting and complex and multitalented.  It's nice when one's partner feels this way about one--I would say the same of her, but she also has a tidy answer to the cocktail party question:  College Professor.

So I panicked and called the rector of my new church and met with him and told him I needed to put together a discernment committee for purposes of discerning what to do with the rest of my life.  He was amenable and told me to keep showing up for a few months and ask again.  So I was happy with that for a time.

Then one day, a silly platitude popped into my head from nowhere and it was this one: "What would you do today if you knew you couldn't fail?"  I don't know why I thought of it.  But I did, and my answer was, "write the novel that has been developing itself in my head for the better part of a decade."  And so I sat down and wrote it.  Pretty much Just Like That.  I think it took something along the lines of 10 weeks, but I didn't count.

Then I thought of my catchy, silly platitude again, and realized, that if I could not fail, I would certainly pitch the literary agent of one of my very favorite writers who is a lesbian, but who has had some extraordinary mainstream success.  So I did that.  It is she whose opinion I am waiting to hear now and one week has passed of the two she asked me to give her to get back to me.

I am bracing myself for rejection, but have a short-list of back up plan agents and will move on as necessary.  All the same, I never thought, three months ago, I would have a more or less completed novel (a good, solid, draft anyway) and the first-level interest of my dream agency by now.

But when I start to feel that maybe I should have done this a long time ago, I stop because the fact is I was not ready to do this until now.  But now I am really, really ready now.  I am almost perfectly ready.

Years ago, I stopped writing fiction.  I slowed way, way down on writing poetry too.  There are many voices in my head telling me that People Don't Really Do That Sort of Thing.  I'm aware of where some of them come from, but not others.  But the long and short of it is that for most of my life I have been following what I imagined was a practical Plan B that would realistically allow me to be a grown up and make a living.

Except I have never, ever, ever made a living.  In spite of denying myself a flighty creative career.  So here I am with practical--or at least employable--skills and degrees and no career of any kind, really.  So what the heck, why not go ahead and be flighty?  What have I got to lose?

So I've written this book and for those past ten weeks, I'd say my head has been absolutely in the clouds.  I have not felt this excited and in love since Nat was born.  (I leave out Selina only because, poor kid, she wasn't the first.)  I thoroughly and absolutely love writing long-form fiction.  And should I sell this one and the next several (I have sequels, prequels, and concurrent stories related to this first one all swirling in my head already), I am not likely to make any less money than I'm making now, doing various things I enjoy enough, but am not head-over-heels in love with.

I feel quite certain that I will sell this book.  I am only in suspense about how well I can sell it and whether I can get a multiple-book contract from someone.  But that "I'm almost 40" switch just flipped on and inspired me to try for the best possible outcome which I've never bothered to do before.  I've always been an underachieving settler.  I feared failure.  But I have no fear of failing at this.  It feels altogether too much like exactly what I should be doing.  I only have questions about how successful my success will be.  And I have truly never felt that way about a single thing before.  I have always aimed low to avoid failure and I have always had a good, strong case of impostor syndrome whenever I did succeed.  This?  This is just plain who I am. Period.

So by February next, I plan to be able to shake the hands of strangers and tell them without flinching, that:

I am a novelist.

On Babble Today

Check out my personal essay in the Country Kid-City Kid issue of Babble.

I have been Strollerderbying much less of late, given my preoccupation with the novel and a couple of other freelance things, but I am hoping to put some more long-form essays out there in the future.

Cross EVERYTHING

The pie-in-the-sky, in-my-wildest-dreams, shoot-for-the-stars-first-then-move-on agent I pitched last week wants the first three chapters of my novel.

I jumped up so fast and shrieked so loudly and rushed into Cole's arms with such ferocity that poor Nat burst into tears with fear.

I tried to tell her she was witnessing the very same reaction we'd had when the social worker called to tell us she'd been born.  It did nothing to comfort her.  Poor kid.

But yeah, haven't been this excited since then.  Very similar too, because we didn't know for sure she'd be ours yet, after that call.  Same with the agent.  But it's a good sign!

Demotion

I am now number four in Nat's affections behind Cole and Babysitter J and now also--bumping Cole out of the top spot--J.  Nat's new BFF made in three short days of school.  End of story.  J. is nearly six (Nat's class is 3-6-year olds) and she likes Nat, too.  They ran around together at the ice cream social this evening, completely inseparable, both complaining loudly when it was time to part.  It helps that I really like J's mother, M, too.

Nat had school for two hours today, tomorrow she bumps up to the full 2.5.  Today, Selina stayed home with J. and I took my computer to the playground and wrote while Nat was in school.  About half-way through the class, a crew of middle-schoolers showed up and started playing softball right in front of the bench where I was working.  So I finished working and watched.

It's a small school with lots of attrition as the kids get older, and this was probably most if not all of the 7th and 8th graders (who are all in one class together), on two softball teams, with one teacher pitching and one playing third base.

If you've read Operating Instructions, you might recall the bit in which Lamott says her reluctance to be a parent was largely about the fact that her child would someday have to be in middle school.  It's the very definition of the worst possible moment of childhood for most people, right?  So here before me were all these middle schoolers, playing this game together and it was just lovely. Some were athletic, some were arty, some needed 10 pitches to hit the ball (and got them), one hit two home runs one-handed (he volunteered to handicap himself), some hit for those afraid to hit, and let them run instead.  One team was up and down in three at bats and one team got run after run, but no one kept score and members of teams kept shifting back and forth depending on what position needed to be filled.

I swear it made me wish I was in middle school again.  You could just tell that all of these kids liked each other; they all felt like they belonged; they all enjoyed the game even if sports weren't really their thing--even if sports really were their thing.

I can't overstate how good I feel about Nat being at this place.

Sisterly Love

Nat is still "phasing in" at school.  Selina went with me again today to wait for Nat on the playground.  When it was time to go in and get her, I told Selina we were going to get sister. 
She hovered by the classroom door waiting and waiting for Nat to come out and when Nat appeared, Selina threw her arms around her and gave her a huge, spontaneous hug, saying "sister! you are finished with school?"

One of those moments when you wish you had a video camera behind your eyes.

Briefly...

Open House yesterday:

LOVED Nat's teacher, loved her assistant, loved the room, loved the other parents, still think this is the school for her.

Up today: first day of leaving Nat alone in the classroom.  But they have a phase-in policy for kids new to this school; new to school in general; new to Montessori, so it's only for a little over an hour.  The PTA (which is called something more PC than "PTA" is having a coffee for parents all day so I can do that while Nat's in the classroom.

It's weird, diving into private school culture when I'd been plotting home school culture for the past several years.  Not to say we'll never home school (we likely will at some point, if only to travel around the world for a year or whatnot), but for now, there's this whole new culture to adjust to.  One nice thing though, is that it seems lots of Nat's classmates' parents share quite similar values to ours--many live in our neighborhood and work in similarly lefty/creative/education-oriented jobs.  I might actually make a friend in the neighborhood this way.

Oh--and yes, I emailed the teacher a letter and she seemed really gracious about it and didn't seem annoyed with me at all.  So that's good.