A comment thread walks into a bar.

Disclaimer:  Some people who leave comments in a thread, myself included, are perfectly gracious, thoughtful people. 

To my writer-friends who have been mauled by the others, have you ever wondered what would happen if people talked to each other in real life like they do on a comment thread? 

Let's! Let's imagine.

Let's say, you are new in town and you've just been invited by some co-workers to a bar-party. You will not know anyone there, you don't even really know your co-workers, and you don't know what to talk about. 

But earlier today you saw something that could be worth mentioning.

A man was standing on the median holding a sign in one hand while he used the other to talk on a cell phone. He yelled angrily into his phone and waved the sign around so you couldn't really tell if he wanted to work for food, or needed a few dollars, or what. 

What are the public and private views we could have of this scene, you wondered at the time? Your natural response might be sympathy but here is this person screaming at someone and now, your compassion is fighting with your fear.  

Good. You'll bring this up.

You arrive at the party. You're at the bar, and so is everyone else. You start talking about this man and his behavior. What do you do when you feel both compassionate and skeptical, you ask?

The person closest to you says, "I don't know. I figure they have enough problems. I usually hand them a five." He takes his drink and walks away.   

Two persons who have overheard this come over. 

Person 1 says, "I heard what you were saying and I see this all the time and my opinion is, GET A JOB. Then talk to me."

"That's so insensitive," Person 2 replies. "You have no idea why he's not working." 

"Really! Insensitive?" Person 1 replies. "Are you also the type who'd like to raise taxes to help him buy beer too? And go back to school for a college degree that I never even went? Snowflake." 

"That's not what a 'snowflake' is and name-calling is a sign of low intellect, my friend," says Person 2.

"I believe," says Person 3 who is nearby, "the question was how to resolve the cognitive dissonance. It is false to say that we don't have mixed emotions when we see an unusual display of mixed behaviors. But I would say to our guest, that you are more likely to regret acting on fear, than on compassion. " 

"We're not friends," says Person 1 to Person 2.

You notice that two new people are looking at you.  

"That's stupid, what you said," says Person 4.

"He reminds me of people who didn't like me in school because I had bad skin," says Person 5 to Person 4.

Person 4 agrees with person 5 and says, "I had to stay in the classroom because of bullies who made fun of my birthmark." 

"People like you who trash-talk other people who don't have money disgust me. Maybe you don't have their toughness," says Person 5 to you. 

"Despikabel," says person 4.

"That's not how you say 'despicable'," says person 2. 

"This is so first world," person 6 says to you, "how you sound sympathetic, but really don't like people if they aren't like you. I see it all the time." 

"Yeah," person 7 says to you, "Cry me a river, I can tell from your shoes that you never had to work a day in your life." 

"The man on the median is why Trump got elected," says person 8 from the edge of the crowd where there isn't much light. 

"Trump is an ass****" person 9 shoots back. 

"Trump knows our country has forced people to stand on the median. And he's going to fix that. You watch," says person 1, who is drunk. 

"You people who think Trump even knows who you are," says person 2, "are the problem." 

"There is no unity in proving another wrong so that you can be right," says person 3. "Let's stop talking fault, and start talking solutions!" 

"You're an idiot," says person 9. 

"You're all missing the point," person 10 says, "did you even listen to what our new friend was saying?" 

"Trump," says person 1, "we're talking about Trump." 

"I had really bad skin in high school, but I took medication for it and it was fine!" says person 11 to person 5. 

"That's really irresponsible," says person 2 to person 11. "The side effects include insanity." 

"You're insane," says person 1 

"You're all in a dark basement. In the dark," says person 6

Everyone looks at Person 6 with expressions of WTF.  

"Ass**** Trump supporter," says Person 9 to Person 1.

"Snowflake," slurs Person 1. 

"That's not what 'snowflake' means," says Person 2.

The conversation is now taking place without you. It's as if you're already home in bed while persons 1 -11 are becoming Lord of the Flies.   

The next day, you mention this to your co-worker, the hostile nature of the conversation, the name-calling and attacks, the off-topic departures, and the absence of real discussion after you launched such a great ice breaker.

"That's how they are," says your co-worker. "They're always there but they're not there for the conversation. They just want to be somewhere at all. And even when they pick on each other, they're still engaged in the same activity."

You know you'll come back to this bar. You'll take a seat, throw out a topic and enjoy your adult beverage while the crowd devours it. You'll understand that commenters are looking for one thing more than anything else which is another person that appears to be listening. 

You may or may not elect to be that person. But you'll know that what's most important is that you didn't elect to go home and stay there. 

The end.

Write like nobody's going to read it.

I love this book more
every time I write it and
my book knows it.

Recently, I was talking to my husband about the novel I began submitting a couple of years ago, and then put on hold pending I don't know what; maybe one of those epiphanies I have when I'm applying mascara.   

I just stopped sending it out. 

It didn't seem worth the trouble.

But, it didn't seem right to desert it, either.

"Why don't you take out everything that wasn't fun to write and start over?" asked my husband. 

As many of you know, I have been writing this novel for – I'm not kidding – ten years. 

It is my third. It has been the most difficult to write. It is the most well written. It was the least fun to write and rewrite and rewrite again. 

The first novel was squeaky clean. There was not a single F-word, not the hint of a sex scene. The plot, a stretch to begin with, was layered with so many contrived, improbable twists it was like one of those houses with too many additions that sprawl in all directions.  

The second novel was better but had "pacing" issues which, for a reader, is like a non-reader watching a moderately interesting two-hour movie for eight hours.   

But book 3, this is the one that has been there all along saying, "Hot! Warm, no, no, COLD! COLD! Here! I'm RIGHT HERE!"

I dance with it, I fight with it, I yell at it, I ask it what it wants from me, I stare at it, and then I say  "Maybe we need to take a break,"  and I put it away and think about non-fiction. 

I tell everyone I've-stopped-writing-fiction-and-this-time-I mean-it, and they look at me the way you look at someone who's finally broken up with an asshat and say,  "It's probably just as well." 

Then I write it some more. 

Why can't I stop?  

I took my husband's advice. I dumped a third of the book including characters that even I started to dislike as I wrote them. I started over, writing it like I was creating a movie one scene at a time. The process seemed too easy. It seemed novice. It seemed unsophisticated. 

But mostly, it was fun. 

It was fun to play with an idea, and not develop it, and then delete it. 

It was fun not to wonder who else would like this story. 

It was fun to write like nobody would read it. 

It was fun the way skiing or driving with the top down is. It doesn't make you richer or more attractive, it's just easy. You don't do it because you hope to be famous or competitive. You do it because it's fun.

It's fun. 

I've been having more fun than I expected to since that chat. I'm happier, I look better and have been laughing more. This made me think of people who don't have enough fun. Is that you?

If it is, consider this:

If you were told that a person you love needed to have more fun for their mental health, would you not do everything to be sure they did? You'd be creative. But you'd try. Because it was important.

Be the person you love, have fun before you forget what it feels like.

But mostly, have fun before it becomes not worth the trouble.


Love,
Susan 

You only have one of you

I don't know who said this but we
could be friends.

The writer Anne Lamott says about inner critics: “Quieting these voices is at least half the battle I fight daily. But this is better than it used to be. It used to be 87 percent.”

Inner critics are a universal problem among writers; one of my inner critics was in my office before I got there the other day to remind me that 85% of the agents I submitted my novel to a couple of years ago, said "No."

"I wasn't sure you remembered that," said my inner critic.

When my kids were  younger, and they were leaving to go back to school, or away on a trip, or to the store for hot sauce, I used to say: "Be careful out there. I only have one of you."

Be careful out there. You only have one of you.

Be careful when you talk to yourself in reproachful, doubtful, reprimanding ways. Be careful when you feel small next to the fortune of others, or pummeled by fate, or unable to see past obstacles. Remember that while you have an inner critic, you also have an inner butler-defender who carries your tray of weapons: grace, resilience and your good glasses. 

Life is hard enough, already.

Don't make it harder.

You may not need more.

You may have enough, already.

You probably don't need attention.

You may just need to like your own company more.

Life is hard enough, already.

Don't make it harder.

Our libraries of intuition and instincts grow more powerful by the day

Learn to trust your own judgment.

We are more likable when we are being who we are without explaining.

Don't try to organize what others think of you.

We make it about avoiding mistakes, but we forget:

Normal life requires we understand the flaws in order to enjoy the improvements

We want to look back on a perfect present in the perfect future, but we forget:

It is not possible to do or know all the things we'll wish we did or knew in hindsight.

We shape and knead life, like bread dough until it looks like we want it to, but we forget:

We can't live inside a life we've put on display, we can only stand to the side of it.

You only have one of you. Be who you are.
Notice the things you are, that you once wished you could be. 

Know when it's enough, already.

The biggest fan

Just look at the face on that adorable book.

Once, I went to Boston, an hour away, to attend a writer's conference. For the first time, I would meet an agent, and pitch a novel. 

I was nervous.  

I accessorized this future memory with the most luxurious detail available. I booked a limo and a room at the Boston Harbor Hotel, which is a place one doesn't visit, but experiences, between the Molton Brown skincare products and view of the harbor alone. 

I ordered lobster and stared at the water. In twenty-four hours, I thought, I would be mulling over new information about my career, because back then, I didn't know I already had that information.  

I carried a book by Elizabeth Berg, an uber-relatable writer who seemed a little like me, but who actually seems a lot like everyone. I wondered if people would ever think that about my writing.

I brought a collection of Enrico Morricone songs played by YoYo Ma. This, I planned, would be the soundtrack for my experience if down the road, I forgot the way this felt, to chase a dream that probably wouldn't come true, but, oh my God, might. 

And there we sat, me and next-me, eating lobster and looking at the harbor. Not the me helping kids into college, or encouraging a husband through a rough patch in his business, or running a household, or being a good sister or friend or daughter or community volunteer. 

The afternoon darkened over the water and I began to think about giving up. Next-me would be too hard. But how hard? I was afraid. But I was euphoric. I was going to lose something in the morning. But I was going to gain something in the morning, too. The something was hope.

Today, I'm a few years and two books and many articles away from that weekend at the Boston Harbor when I was introduced to the two people who encouraged me to stay in the game: the agent who requested a full manuscript, and next-me, my often fickle, but honest and lifelong fan who has been at my side every day of my writing career, saying if you quit, you won't know how it turned out.   

In May, I am planning to go back to that conference with another book to pitch. I'll meet an agent who might request a full manuscript. I'll send it and maybe I won't get a response. Maybe I will. I don't know. What matters is that I will not be figuring it out, hoping for the best, preparing for the worst, on my own. 

I'll be in the company of my biggest fan.  We're looking forward to it. 

Be that. Be your own fan. Be next-you. 

Never give up.

That is one picky universe

"I have a crush on the New York Times," I told a writer friend a few years ago.

"Ask it out,"  he said.

So, I submitted a piece to the Modern Love column. Kindly, they rejected it before I could get my hopes up.

"I was rejected by the New York Times,"  I reported to my writer friend.

"Everybody gets rejected by the New York Times," he said.

That's not true, of course, there are plenty of people at that party,  but I know what he meant. You need talent and the right topic to get in line and then you still might have to talk to the bouncer.

Many rejections ago, when I started writing and sending my submissions "into the universe",  here's what I did. I wrote a 1600 word essay and sent it on heavy bond paper to the Boston Globe. I never got a response and assumed it never arrived. 

What with snail mail.

Many rejections later, I realized that the essay was rejected not only because it was 1000 words too long,  or because it was submitted on cardboard, but because it was not well written, despite what my mother and husband said.

It was over-everything. Over-long, over-wrought, over-reaching, and of course, overweight.

I wasn't startled when I found out how hard it was to publish, I was stunned. Had I known how many rejections that  universe spits out before it accepts a submission, I may have quit.

But because I'm a writer and I love my captor, I soldiered on after the Boston Globe maybe-never received my piece.

I focused on  my fiction and submitted a completed novel which was rejected by everyone.

I wrote a second that was rejected by half of everyone

I wrote a third which brought a request for a full manuscript by a mega-agent the next day.

A week later,  and you'll be so jealous if you're a writer, I received the rejection  with a letter of praise and suggestions. I took the book back and rewrote it.

For six years.

Eventually, I discovered that writing better was more important to me than submitting, and that loving my work felt better than being noticed.  Most important, I learned that big goals are not met in a single leap, but by taking the smaller, friendlier ones along the way seriously.

And here's the thing about "eventually":

The ratio does begin to turn around. More submissions are accepted than they are rejected, and each rejection hurts less. If you don't become an Eeyore, you realize that you're probably further away from the submissions-on-cardboard days,  than the Big Goal.

Eventually:

I published a first piece, about two kids leaving for college at the same time  in  the Concord Monitor.
I focused on my blog and  my traffic increased until some readers were not even related to me, and, lived in places I had to look up on a map.
I sold an essay to a national publication
I published in three online magazines.
The Christian Science Monitor selected one of my pieces as a top ten in its category.
I got picked up by the Washington Post.

My novel and I are almost ready to journey into the universe once more.  "You again?" it will say several times before I catch it in a good mood.

And then, eventually, probably - not possibly - there will be another exchange with my writer friend.

"I did it," I'll say.

"I knew you would," he'll respond.

I would sometimes like to flee, but I can't. I'm a writer and I love my captor.

And I haven't been published in the New York Times yet.

Post-less

My schedule for the week

Recently, I saw an announcement that Dave Barry, "Legendary Humorist", would be speaking/performing/signing a book somewhere. I appreciate Dave Barry (and his friend Carl Hiaasen) but I don't remember the details.  I just thought: I would hate to be billed as a legendary humorist.

What pressure. What if you're tired? Or coming down with a cold? Or hungover? What if for any other reason, you just don't feel funny?  What if you're scheduled to be funny on stage that night, but wake feeling anxious and can't shake it? What if you're just having an insecure day? We all have insecure days.

What pressure.

I'm sensitive to this. I fret if  there's high expectation attached to something I said I'd do, or if I'm rushed to produce something without adequate time to prepare, or, apparently, if I have just enough time to prepare, because as of last night, Sunday, after I literally had a week to prepare today's post, well...

It's not performance-anxiety as much as time-management anxiety. I'm not preoccupied with doing something well enough, I'm preoccupied with not doing it on time which makes no sense, because I have complete control over my schedule. And yet, it seems the way I manage deadlines best is to give myself plenty of time in advance, and almost no time right before a deadline so that I can strike a comfortably pressing environment without creating a pressured one.  You know who else does this? Children who are potty training, and every college freshman I ever knew.

Am I on my own nerves with this behavior? Yes, I am. But I understand it. As I've said before, the magic thing about fifties is that you figure things out quickly and take action. All that staring out the window, thinking about why, who and what we "are" is what they're doing over at the kid table.

I love writing - book, blog or whatever - but I love it most when I have plenty of time to delete and start over and delete and start over again.  For example, in addition to finishing my novel, I post to this blog on Mondays.  The minute I hit "send," I start writing for the following Monday. It's my fun day. When I-don't-have-to-run day.  It's what I call the "paint on the page day".  I write, write, write, knowing most of it is crap, but also knowing I have days to slice and dice, and lots of time for distractions discoveries:  Facebook updates, Google searching, blog trotting. Then, as the stretch between Mondays shortens, by Sunday, I have the basic post and I finish it off by becoming that twenty-five-year old who says in interviews,  "I thrive on pressure" (spare me) when what they really mean is "I procrastinate like crazy,  but know how to pull my ass out of the fire at the last minute every time," (a far more impressive skill) and that's what I do. I meet my Monday deadline and have interesting discoveries to bring up at dinner .

Last week, however, after being pulled repeatedly from my writing schedule for one reason or another I was left with only time for last minute writing, and no time at all for discoveries. And yet, on that abbreviated schedule, didn't I have to look up why Yanni divorced Linda Evans, what the expression "Come to Jesus" really means, where I would find the mother-of-the-bride dress of my dreams, why the chat list on Facebook changes so often, and pictures of Chopin so I could ask my violist daughter if she ever noticed how much he  looks like Al Pacino? ("No," she said, "But I will now. Thanks.")

Early last night, when I would usually be picking a good graphic to go with my post, and discussing where to go for dinner with Larry, I was still in my socks and ponytail, looking at a post that had six or seven different points embedded in it.  

Give it up, I thought, and so I fixed myself up and went for dinner.  

So I apologize for offering only a post about not posting this week, but I'll bet some of you can relate. And, even as you read, I am splashing about in my stream of consciousness and eyeing my editorial calendar, in preparation for next Monday's post.

Because it's Monday, my fun day. I'll be ready for Sunday, which is another story.

P.S. The line "I-don't-have-to-run-day" comes from The Bangles "Manic Monday" a song that was probably written in it's entirety on a late Sunday evening and yet performed very well on the charts. 

Game called

My submission date of 9/1 has been rained out.

A couple of weeks ago, I submitted my manuscript to my detective expert, or, as I have been referring to him half-Seriously for some time, my detective. I asked him to check the police-y stuff, thanked him for his help, and I think I added a :)  too, because after all the praise I’d had from my circle of close friends and family, I was feeling secure-grande about this “work,” patting it on its cover before work, smiling at it on my way by, telling it I was proud of it, and so on.

:):):):):)
“Feel free to make suggestions,” I invited my detective expert to do in my breezy cover letter.
A couple of days went by. Nothing.
:):):):)
 My detective expert had become involved in something else, I considered. Probably he went out town and left the manuscript on his kitchen counter.

:):):)
The first email came shortly after that. After a nice beginning, it referred me to a particular chapter and page and said:
“This won’t work.”
:(
Another email followed:
“This isn’t factual.”
:(:(
And another,
“This wouldn’t happen.”
:(:(:(
And finally, a fourth,
“Just my opinion but..”
:(:(:(:(
In one case, he cited not just an error but an error that when fixed, would render the paragraph (which was damn funny when it was wrong) as interesting as a piece of wood. But he was was not only right, he was collaborative, offering a perfect detective-esque fix which was so smooth, it made me friend him on Facebook.

I haven’t heard from him since Thursday which means he either went out of town again, or loves the manuscript but has been too busy to tell me, or hates it and is asking his friends right now how they’d tell me my book sucks.

A couple of nights ago, I dreamed I was reading a review of my book in the Union Leader (it’s a start) and the headline said: “About a book that asks: Are we really alike in the ways that count? I can only reply: Who cares?” I woke up feeling like I’d been dropped from the top of the Serious tree.

I decided I would rewrite the book again. Then I woke up ++ and realized the man in my dream looked a lot like a vice president who hated me when we worked together in 1983. Then I woke up +++ and realized that if I write another book, it should be a first draft, not an eighth.

I remembered that it’s hard to be Serious, apologized to my book for thinking bad thoughts about it, and promised to give it those scenes it needs to be better. Then I realized that in my detective expert I have not a reader but a collaborator who is as Serious as I am. More than reading the manuscript he is examining it. Instead of saying, “Great read!” and blowing it off, he’s taking several hours of his life to help make it better.

I don’t have a critic. I have an ally.

It’s a heady experience to realize how much your family and friends love you, support your work, and will do whatever you ask to help you succeed. But in the end, it’s a lonely job to be Serious. Sooner or later you stop thinking about who will play the main character in the movie, and you go to work, hopefully with the email address of your friends and allies at the ready.

Thank you, Rick. Feel free to make suggestions, and I’m Serious.
:)

Rejection. There's no game without it.

I was rejected recently by a publication which until now has accepted everything I’ve submitted. That it happened two weeks before I plan to submit a novel to at least a hundred agents in NYC is coincidental. But timing feels like fate. I’ve silenced it, I’ve sent it back to its corner, but that insidious little voice has crept into my forehead more than once to say, “See? I told you.”

Certain uncomfortable truths emerge in the course of writing and submitting even as they argue with each other. Here are two: Some writers publish, but all writers get rejected. And, all writers (even bad ones) get better with more writing. We need both. We need to know we’re as wonderful as our mothers said we were, and we need to get over ourselves once that happens. Acceptance is the bouncer at the door taking a quick look and waving you on. Rejection, at least in the first few hours of its life, is the person at the party glancing past your ear for someone more interesting to talk to.

And here is the third truth: if it doesn’t collapse a writer’s hopes altogether, rejection fuels improvement. Rejection separates the hopeful from the Serious.

So there are two ways to handle rejection. One is to respect the opinion of that insidious little voice and feel that at least you’ve smartened up before wasting any more time. The other is pick up that insidious little voice and flush it down the toilet like a daddy long legs.

Two weeks.
A hundred agents.
There will be rejection.
Game on.

THE BOOK IS DONE!!!!!!!!!

Date of birth: 8/19/09
Time of birth: 10:25 AM
Weight/Length: 103,525 words.
Name: The Right Guy

Baby is well but in need of clean up. Mother is tired and happy and looking forward to a trip later on to the drive-thru at McDonald's.

Tom 301 - For Advanced Writers Only

I won't name names but there is a famous author who once lamented that there were not yet college courses being offered in that author’s name but, hopefully, there would be soon.

That author needed my brother Tom to come over and push that author off that author’s chair.

Tom is one of those very approachable, super-kind people who are hugely successful because they are 100% suited to what they do. They radiate their good expectations of their lives, and only talk to one or two people when they’re blue instead of dragging their address book down with them. When I have a party it is Tom everyone wants to sit next to, including me, and if someone gets drunk and laughs extra large over humor that is only medium, it is Tom who makes them feel the next day like everyone else did the same thing.

Unless they're pretentious. Here is what happened when I tried once to say a pretentious thing to Tom:

Me: (tilting head and looking serious) Have you heard that expression, “Forgiveness is the violet of the heel that’s crushed it?”
Me:
Tom:
Tom: No.
Me: Wait, that was wrong. It’s “Forgiveness is the violet of the fragrance…” No. Wait.
Tom: Okay.
Me: Ah. This is it. “Forgiveness is the fragrance of the heel that has crushed the…”
Tom:
Me: I’m mixing up Forgiveness and Fragrance. Okay. Hold on.
Tom: Okay.
Me: “Forgiveness is the fragrance of the violet which clings to the heel that has crushed it.”
Tom: Christ.
Me: That’s it.
Tom: Please, just tell me if I love something I’ll set it free… yadee, yadee, yadee.

(Don’t you wish he was your brother?)

Our exchanges are all over the map but I take that one in particular out and look at it when writing becomes flowery, or pretentious, or God forbid, “gauzey,” the worst, and laziest adjective ever born to describe a writer’s style. Pretentious writing among other things, inflates a point which probably belongs in the “goes without saying,” bin. It’s almost as tedious as moody writing, those short sentences or strings of words which all say the same thing but in a different way, as though a reader will come around and be in your mood with you if you poke at them enough.

He looked at the door. Stared. Didn’t look away. Time went by. Still. He stared.
And then, when staring wasn’t enough – he couldn’t look away. He stared some more.
At the door. He was alone. He was tired. He was forgotten. He was a violet on the heel of a fragrance of a boot.

I love second day editing for that reason. You’re in a different mood, maybe not as gloomy or - gauzey. Maybe not as cheerful or perky. You look over that last half of a paragraph before the chapter ends and see all those fragments absent the influence that made them magical when you typed them and you realize - it’s not standalone. It needs to lean on your writer mood or it will fall down. Standalone writing, the kind that looks great no matter what comes before or after or how long it’s been there on the page is, like having those conversations with Tom that make you feel understood.

Unless you try to be pretentious. I will not be pretentious, even Someday, or I'll get pushed off my chair.

I've had a tough week. Pass me those metaphors.

My book is after me.
It was limp and pale and feverish.
I made it better and now it wants to thank me.
Everywhere I go, there it is.

It’s a metaphor day, I love those. I try not to say writer-things to non-writers who care for me because it means they'll have to work so hard not to tell me I sound like a pom-poms arse. But I lost power for five days. I had a post-concussion headache for three weeks. And the whole time, even with a headache in the dark, I let everyone go first at intersections because it's the holidays. So I’m going to have a metaphor post because I’ve been very good.
Without further ado:

I’ve compared this process of finishing and rewriting a novel to labor and delivery (like 4978675 other writers) but it is, it is, it is like that. Minus the feeling that one’s body is splitting in half, there is the same panicky feeling that comes toward the end when there is:

No turning back. You don’t want to turn back, but if you did, you couldn't.

Because I began the book with the ending in mind, I wrote toward it, bringing the first draft right up to the penultimate scene. Then I went across the street and looked at it from there and realized…it wasn’t going to work.

It wasn’t a girl, it was a boy! Not a Francesca after all, but a Frankie. If I was going to Do Everything, I would need all new t-shirts and onesies, in different colors. And a blue frame around the giraffe picture, not pink, or that lame, not-sure-yellow. This is why people keep boy names for their girls. It's just too hard to change Everything and make a new picture. It's a lot of work.

Writers who are unpleased with an arc are never bored. In traffic lines, in supermarket lines, we’re near the page we left open at home. We’re writing still. It’s like having a round the clock dilemma to work through. You can’t make it happen, you can only wait. So you wait and wait, and get frustrated with all those false breakthroughs, until finally at a light, in the dentist chair, while you’re looking at your cat, the awful/thrilling question comes: Would this be better? Then you say, Yes. It would be a lot better. It would be perfect.

And it’s time. The “real” breakthrough has arrived.

I was writing a scene a few nights ago that had been coming together for a while in my head, and then zip, zip, zip - there it was. I looked at it and said, "Of course. He gets custody of the teenager. Of course he does."

It is a page long, about 400 words, and the sentences are sparse, but it lays out the chemistry, history, and motivation between two characters better than any short story I could write. What was there before was maybe a B, adequate enough. What is there now is a 4.0. I realized…this works. Then I realized…it will change Everything.

I thought about the rest of the book, the things I could push around a little, maybe reword, edit out, but that only seemed like writing with make-up on. Serious writers don't turn their backs on writing that can be truer. The only choice is to embark on some ruthless, Serious rewriting until the day comes again when you can sit at a red light without staring into space and getting honked at.

There is no turning back. It's mine, I asked for it, and the book will not be what I imagined originally, but wonderfully better; rich with life, love, feeling, meaning, and spirit.

Like my life after my children were born.

(I had to. This is a metaphor post and that one is the truest of all).

Word count on a yesterday day

Because I'm doing (or have plans to do) Everything to write, rewrite and launch my novel, by 9:00 on a typical Serious day I’ve done my work-out and have written 1000 words or more.

When I read about other writers “avoiding the page,” it makes no sense. We don’t go through the publication and submitting process because there’s nothing else to do – we’re Serious, most of us.

I understand it completely.

It’s not a block, it’s a disconnect between the stars of the mind that have to align in order to create. On good days, that connection falls in without a lot of prep work. You pack up your imagination and la-la-la, wander deep into the forest-mind of your character, visualizing everything from a facial expression to the sound of traffic going by. And you write it all down before the tape stops. You say "There! Done!" and wheel back from the desk in your chair. On bad days, you’re in two places at once. You’re wondering how a character would react to a murder scene, while you consider a holistic treatment for the dog’s hot spot.

Yesterday by 9:00, I’d sent an e-mail to a couple of people to see if anyone else thinks Rod Blagojevich resembles Michael Scott with bangs, checked out mug shots of musicians on Smoking Gun to prove to my son that Axl Rose had been arrested (he has), read a couple of Onion articles, made a shopping list, and clicked on most of the AOL headlines (what pop star under 25 just gave birth to number four, I wanted to know). Then I windexed the glass surfaces in my attic, looked for "Christmas Festival" by the Boston Pops, IM’d my violist daughter who was having a bad AM, and skimmed all of my favorite sites authored by Very Serious writers. This made me (finally) go back to my WIP, where I changed “as though,” to “as if,” sixteen times.

Yield by 10:00: fourteen words.

Because yesterday was such a crappy day weather and Economy wise, I was pretty convinced by 4 PM that I would fail to Do Anything, much less Everything, in spite of what it says up there at the top of this page.

But just for fun, at around 4:05, I opened a page. I did a little editing. A little thinking, and dreaming. I had the right music playing. And I wrote a scene that nailed the relationship between two major characters, when they witness a crime scene together.

And now I’m in love again.