The Reality of Zooey

Two months ago if you asked anyone who knew me if I would ever get a dog, they would've emphatically said no. Let's just say I have never been a dog person. Possibly this dates back to me at age 12, in a moment of sheer idiocy, "kissing" my sleeping dog's face. Said dog reared back and bit a piece of my lip off. I had to get stitches. There was a gruesome scar for a while.

So yeah, I didn't really like dogs. When I visited friends who have them, I'd be cool, acting like I thought their dogs were cute, but inside I was cringing. Dogs kinda smell like, uh, dog. And I didn't like them jumping on me, or God forbid, licking-slash-drooling on me.

My fear/annoyance of dogs even inspired a story. It's called "Chasing the Rabbit" and it appeared in Cicada magazine a few years ago. First lines:

No offense to any dog lovers out there, but Abby didn't like dogs. She did, however, like the idea of dogs. In theory they seemed like good companions. Loyal. Loving. Obedient. Friendly.

But Abby (like me) learned fast about reality. Her new puppy bites her face (hmm, wonder where I got the idea for that?) and she comes to this conclusion: "It was the idea of dogs that had tricked her. Reality was different, and her scar would never let her forget it."

Not too long ago I actually dug this old issue of Cicada up and read this section to my daughter, who had been begging my husband and me for months to get her a dog. My daughter is very persistent, to put it mildly, when she gets an idea in her head, so I was growing worried that her crusade for a dog would eventually wear her father down. (This has happened before. See iPhone, new queen-sized bed, bigger bedroom, for previous examples of daughter's skill at breaking his will. Her tactics include mentioning the object of her desire several times per day, posting detailed lists of why she "needs" this object, and creating elaborate bargains with us.)

I waved my story at her and told her she didn't know the first thing about taking care of a dog--the reality of day to day life with a puppy. You have to take it for walks and clean up its piddle and poops, and wipe its muddy paws when it's raining. Nevermind the stuff it's going to get into--it'll eat your shoes! And anyway, it's going to be ME who takes care of the dog. Let's not kid ourselves here. I'm the one who's going to be home all day with it. I'm the one who's going to have to walk it and clean up after it and train it!

She just blinked at me. There she was sitting in her larger bedroom, on her queen sized bed. She stopped clicking on her iPhone, and said: Now that older brother has gone off to college, don't you think we, the three of us, should have a puppy, to help bind us together, in a new way, as a half-empty nest family?

Cut to:  We got a puppy.

Her name is Zooey.

Yes, it is true, everything I said about the reality of dogs. And it's true, too, for the most part, that I am the one who takes Zooey for walks and cleans up her accidental piddles. She smells like, uh, dog. She enjoys eating the corners of all of our rugs. She's spit up TWICE in the middle of the night in the middle of daughter's bed.

So it's all true, this reality I had been trying to explain to my daughter. But here is what I didn't know:

Zooey. 

Oh, you just can't believe how adorable she is! She's got this sweet little wrinkly forehead and these precious floppy ears. (We got her from the pound and the vet thinks she might be some kind of pug/beagle mix) She follows me around and curls up next to me while I write. She cocks her head when I say something like she's really trying to understand what I'm talking about. And get this: I think she does. We have very intense conversations during the day when we take our multiple walks and I must explain to her that she can't eat the berries or the grass and she should just ignore that other dog's dried up poop in the middle of the sidewalk left behind by some %&^# owner who couldn't bother carrying a poop bag.

She is so smart too. I am not exaggerating. I know every dog parent probably says this, but in Zooey's case it is 100% true. She can sit, and shake paws, and let herself outside. And she can let herself back in too! She has only had three accidents and that was totally my fault for misreading her doggie clues.

During the day while I work on my writing, Zooey works on her latest bone project, carrying it around the yard, burying it, and digging it back up. At night she curls up on my lap and snores contentedly, every so often her eyes fluttering open to gaze up at me, that sweet wrinkled forehead of hers wrinkling up even more sweetly. She loves me. It is clear to everyone who sees us together.

Here is another reality: every morning when I wake up I have to walk past my college son's empty bedroom. It's always dark in there and always clean. Somehow I can brush right by. He's okay. He's happy. He's doing what he should be doing. And honestly, I can't worry about him every second of the day.

I've got a dog waiting downstairs for her breakfast. Not just any dog either. Zooey.

The (seemingly) Endless Verginess of the Verge

Dear Reader,

Take a journey with me.

January, 2000. I had just gotten my first acceptance letter. The story was "The Parade of Princes" and the magazine was Cicada, a literary magazine for young adults in the Cricket group. The kind editor and I shared a few back and forth letters (this was all done in the mail back then) and the story appeared in the Sept/Oct issue. I got paid 25 cents a word. I was thrilled. It really seemed like I was on my way. A few months after the story appeared, Cicada forwarded me a letter from an editor at Viking. She loved the story, she said, and wondered if I’d ever considered writing a novel. I got another letter from the editors at the Institute of Children’s Literature. They wanted to include the story in a book called First-Time Authors that they planned to use with their students. Oh yes, Baby. I was ON MY WAY.

Now digress with me:

Several years later I was working in a fifth grade classroom as the gifted/talented collaborator. The teacher was teaching a cool lesson about fractions and measurements (I think that was the purpose of the lesson. One of the things I realized that year was that I had never really learned fifth grade math.) The gist of the activity was the kids drew rulers on long slips of paper and marked off the segments into inches (or maybe it was centimeters. Another thing that never clicked with me: the metric system) The teacher wanted the kids to note how you could keep dividing a segment in half. There would be a point when you wouldn’t even be able to see it, but conceivably you could continue to break the segment into smaller pieces. Sort of a reverse infinity, if you will.

Back to my point:

The verge. For a long time I measured the verge as a definitive line, the moment when I crossed from Unpublished into the Land of the Published Book Author. In the “Hero’s Journey,” the basis for pretty much every story ever told, including the story of our own human lives, the hero leaves the comforts and/or discomforts of home and sets out on his journey. He leaves the ordinary world and crosses the threshold into the special one, the place where the adventure really starts cooking. He’s tested. He makes friends and enemies along the way. He does battle. Etc. And eventually the journey ends (usually right back where the guy started) but now he’s a changed person, a true hero who’s earned his reward. The end.

So in my journey, I always saw the moment I got my book deal as crossing the threshold into the special world of Book Deal-dom. I imagine this lovely kingdom as a place of books signings and school visits and fan letters and on particularly bright dreamy days, it includes fame and fortune and a gold sticker on a book cover. When I said I was on the verge, I meant that I was steps away from crossing over into this blessed land.

The trouble is the threshold—the verge—is not a line after all. Instead it’s more like those segments on the paper rulers the fifth graders were drawing. It’s much wider and contains many more pieces than I ever suspected. Since January 2000 I’ve had more stories published. I’ve gotten nice rejections to the stories and books that weren’t published. I wrote many manuscripts. Some multiple times. I got an agent. I lost an agent. I found another agent. I have people that love what I write and champion it. And I have people who think it’s “meh” and/or won’t give it the time of day. There are times when I wonder how wide this freaking threshold is. Surely I am about to cross over. Soon? Ever?

Then it hit me.

I already have. The Verge isn’t the moment of the book deal. It's when I began to believe in myself as a writer. That’s when I crossed over. That’s when I left the ordinary world and entered the special one, my own writer’s journey. Along the way, I’ve been tested. I’ve made friends. And enemies. (the biggest one is Self-Doubt. That guy’s a bastard, let me tell you.) And I have truly done battle. Every day with the blaring blank computer screen. It’s entirely possible that I’ll never get The Deal. If it does happen, it may turn out to be the climax of my story. Or maybe it’ll be just another blip of a sub-plot.

Here’s the funny thing: the verge is not an elusive, ever-widening line. It's the journey itself. On this rare sunny day in Columbus, all's right with the world, and I can say without a hint of sarcasm or self-delusion, what a cool up and down adventure it’s been.

Still on the Verge

A few weeks ago my good writing friend and mentor, children’s author Tracy Barrett invited me to write a post for her Goodbye, Day Job! blog. (I’ll give you a moment to read it here. Thanks.) So writing for Tracy got me thinking about a lot of things—some kind of depressing, like the fact that I quit my day job four years ago to write full-time and haven’t made much outward progress on the publication front since then. Unless you count one story in Cicada. But it was like two years ago and the next story I sent them was “passed on” as my former agent liked to say. I had a few nibbles here and there and a few encouraging comments from editors and agents. 

But mostly what I got were more passes, or worse, nothing. As in, no response at all from what I picture as extremely young, over-worked editors, demoralized in the face of this dismal economy and general state of malaise when it comes to the future of the book industry. That, or else they’re all out having a grand time strolling the streets of Manhattan and sipping coffee in outdoor cafes and traveling around giving speeches at conferences for audiences of eager/deluded beginning writers (I get this image from following these editors on Twitter. Lately my Twitter feed reminds me more and more of high school when I was sitting off at a side table eating soggy French fries while gazing longingly at the popular group, laughing it up and clearly living more exciting lives then I ever would. I know this is a weird digression, but it occurs to me that there’s a revealing clue in here about why I spend my days writing about angsty teenagers. Or maybe not.)

Anyhoo, enough of the depressing side of things. In the positive column I’ve come up with the following:

1. I’m counting that Cicada story, damn it. I should count it. They paid me, the only payment I’ve earned thus far in the past four years.

2. I said in the Goodbye, Day Job post that I had written over 500,000 words during this time “off.” That was a total guesstimate. But it got me thinking how many words I really have written. And guess what? It’s 1,564,910. (This includes eight novels for a total of 483,256. Plus 1,081,654 words of daily journal writing. In case you’re wondering, I did not include in this number several projects I started but didn’t finish, a handful of stories, three years of correspondence with my writing buddy, and this blog. For trivia purposes the blog stands at 45,398 words as of this moment.)

3. And speaking of my writing buddy, meeting the glorious Donna Koppelman of Edenton, North Carolina in line at a porto-potty at a writers’ conference, ranks right up there as one of my greatest accomplishments in the past four years. She is my accountability/critique partner extraordinaire. We still haven’t quite decided if we are mentoring or enabling each other on this seemingly never-ending quest of ours, but we do agree that we are thankful to be on the road together.

4. Did you catch it up there in number 2 that I wrote 8 freaking books? (Okay, one of these will likely remain in a drawer forever. And two were complete rewrites, but still. I’ve been busy.)

5. Made some cool breakthroughs in my process. (These include but are not limited to (1) figuring out that I must write something everyday to stay sane. Which also has the added bonus of making me less of a witch with a b around my family (2) realizing that to follow a story through to its proper end I must hold nothing back, no matter how strange or bizarre it seems as I am writing. Strangely, my best stuff comes from this murky, subcutaneous place (3) learning how to revise giant messes of rough drafts with help from tons of books on writing and numerous writing workshops and conferences (4) understanding that I really really do trust the process. When I start a book, I know without a shadow of a doubt, that I will finish it, one way or another, even if I don’t quite know how I will get there.)

Not too shabby. Even if I don’t have an actual book on a shelf to show for it. The road, as they say, is long. There are mountains in our way. But we climb a step every day. (oh geez, now I’m quoting bad 80’s songs.)

It’s freakily true, though. When I first met Donna and we were comparing journeys, she said something like, you’re way further ahead than I am. (She is very sweet. Did I mention this?) And she went on to say, it’s like you’re on the highway and you’ve got your blinker on and the exit’s coming up and you’re about to veer off.

In other words, she was saying I was on the verge. When I started this blog last year (Sept 30, 2010, to be exact), I believed that I was just about to get off the interstate. I had no idea that the exit ramp was so far away. I’ve had my blinker on for miles now. Sometimes I’m tempted to turn the stupid thing off. But that’s only on a really gray day. Mostly, I just keep driving along. I’ve got a decent gps system. Apparently, I’ve got an endless gas tank. My windshield is mostly bug free. I’m not stopping.

Rejections

The other day a beginning writer on my writers’ list serve wrote that he’d just received two rejections. He explained that one agent and one editor had rejected his query for a middle grade novel. WHY!? he wondered. What was the problem? Was it the quality of the query? The idea of the novel? The sample pages he’d sent? Jeez, was this a sign that he should quit writing? The kind, generous, sensitive souls on the list serve chimed in. Rejections happen to the best of us, they said. Even the most successful writers have gotten rejections. Look at JK Rowling, they pointed out. Didn’t she get like 25 rejections before someone snapped up Harry Potter? The beginning writer was cheered up and presumably will continue to send his work out, and, (I sure hope he realizes this) get more rejections.

Rejections. There is nothing that bums a writer out more. I don’t care how long you’ve been doing this. You get that “unfortunately this story does not fit our editorial needs at this time…” letter and sometimes even the best of us can’t help spiraling into an existential pit of despair.

I got my first rejection over ten years ago. It was from Seventeen magazine when they were still publishing YA fiction. It was a form note, but scrawled on the bottom of it were two words: nice story. My first reaction was shock. They rejected ME? What were they thinking? Was it a mistake? I analyzed those two words “nice story” to the point of absurdity. If they thought it was a nice story, why didn’t they want it? What did they mean by “nice”? I cried. I questioned my decision to write. I questioned my reasons for existence. I had no list serve to buck me up. I knew no other writers. I suffered alone.

Then I sent the story out again. It was rejected once more (by Teen. Is that magazine even around anymore?) Then it was accepted by Cicada. Woo hoo. My first published story! After only TWO rejections. I was on my way, happy that the days of rejections were behind me. Ah. I was so deluded and naïve.

Looking back now, I realize this experience was the most gentle of introductions to the submission world. Because over the years I have amassed quite a collection of rejections. (I’m not one of those writers who papers the walls with them, so I can’t tell you how many). The very kindest rejections have those handwritten words on the bottom—nice story, or keep sending. (God, be thankful for those. They're truly little gifts to keep you going.) The worst rejections are not even the form notes, but the no notes. Lately, the policy of many editorial houses is to contact a writer only if they are interested, which means that most writers will receive nothing. No response. Your work simply disappears into a black hole—which I picture as some NYC editor’s desk and later her recycling bin.

Okay, this is starting to depress me. And my intent was to be uplifting to a suffering, frustrated writer soul like the Me of fifteen years ago. So here’s my advice: quit now if all you’re dreaming about is publication and awards and monetary success and movie deals and sitting on a set with Robert Pattinson who is playing your main character. BUT, if you truly love to write, keep writing. You don’t need me to tell you this or some editor either, by the way. If you’re looking for a sign from above, here it is: if after you receive your first rejection (or your 100th) you continue to write, then cheers! Writing is what you are meant to do.