Month: April 2012

My inbox is holding an edited manuscript. First time I’ve ever said that. My dear friend, despite having a new baby on top of a pukey toddler, has thrown me a big, fat, sucker pitch. Oh, she’s a great editor. She’s a sensitive and caring auditor. She’s encouraging.  She’s had her chance at bat. She connected. In fact, one might say she knocked it out of the park. And now it appears it’s my ups. Time to put on the helmet and trot back to the plate.

I love what she has to say. And here’s what she has to say: Work harder.

I can do that. It’s easy for both of us, because she sees this effort the same way I do. It’s still in a formative stage. What, exactly, is it? I keep calling it “the book” but maybe it’s not a book at all. Maybe it’s a collection of stories, loosely woven together by a common thread. If that’s the case, I still need to work harder. But it’s a different kind of work. I need to get individual stories together and start sending those out. Once I start getting buzz from those, I can then put that success in my back pocket (and in my query letters) and start marketing a collection of stories. That’s a long game, that. That means we’re only in the first inning.

If it’s truly “a book,” well then, I’m going to need to take a step back into it and start working harder. We’re in the fourth or fifth inning and … we’re losing. It means more writing about … everything. More background about the place. More physical characteristics about the characters. More work on the narrative arc.

And I’m torn. I’m truly torn. It’s not even a question of long-term gains or short-term pains. It’s a question of how much of this I want to take back. How long I want to play.

OK. Time to get crafty. Time to dive back into the belly of the beast. Today, I start by reading the whole thing (again) as if I was reading a book. Today, I start again.

Not over. Again.

I have to admit, it never really occurred to me until today.

I know for a fact, there were times when my casually distant father would come home from work with a pretty short temper. But he never told us, “Hey! I have a pretty short temper right now!” Sometimes he’d just huff a little bit, or say “Hut tut tut.” Then he’d stand up, leave the table and go sit in his chair. On more than one occasion, he went and sat in the front seat of his car, listening to the radio.

When it happened, my mom would usually say, “Daddy’s really busy at work.” And we’d leave it at that.

So, two things … and I know this is really easy for me to question or delve into because both my folks have long since passed away … but as I get busy … (And believe me, I know what that truly means in terms of stress, lost sleep, long hours, short tempers … I’ve got that covered.) I see myself reacting the same way my father did. Just today I have started to sense the same frustration I must have felt in other people.

For example, when I’m busy, I ‘go inside’ myself. This I know. I become uncommunicative. Distant. Oft times snarky. So, first of two things … Who the hell am I to make other people guess at my present state of mind? What’s to stop me from simply stating, “You know what? I’m on a pretty short fuse right now, so I’m going to be quiet for awhile.” Okay, that sounds like a threat. Something a bully would say. But I suppose that’s where trust comes in. People have to trust me enough to know I won’t blow my stack. In fact, the only combustion that happens when I’m truly frustrated is internal. Like flinging myself on a hand grenade. Muffled. Contained. Self-inflicted damage control.

Okay. So I promise myself to tell you when I’m in a bad mood. Okay? No sense in you guessing. It won’t get you anywhere. Oh! And don’t ask. That only pisses me off. (Which is something totally different.)

Second of two things. And this one I’m just coming around to today … after years of reflection. Maybe, just maybe, my dad was smart enough to know that anything he said—or did for that matter—would be coming from an emotional, irrational, often indefensible position. Maybe not saying anything was his way of not giving in to the stress.

I can think of more than a couple of times in ‘the book’ when he and I have a standoff. Both of us were obviously very emotional. I believe I was being pretty irrational and he was being flat out stubborn. During those times, the most either of us could muster was a cold, hard stare. There were a few times, once in a police station, where Dad did manage to muster an “I’m disappointed in you.”

Whenever he said that we always agreed to talk about it the next day, which we never did.

And we never brought it up again.