I was going to do some big lead in and save my news for the end of this post. But, let’s face it, I’m a little too giddy for that. So, without further ado:
MY BOOK IS GETTING PUBLISHED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay. Now I’m going to take a deep breath and continue in a coherent fashion. After this:
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There are all these things writers do. Things besides writing. Like sometimes an author takes what they’ve written, and they read it out loud to a group of people.
This is an author reading and it’s something I never thought would happen to me. Actually, that’s not right. More accurate to say it’s something I have both hoped for (because it means success!) and dreaded (because oh my God how could I possibly read something I wrote in front of people?). I dealt with these conflicting feelings by refusing to think about readings at all.
Then I wrote a short story called There Used to Be Cowboys.
And it got accepted to an awesome local magazine called Helen.
Fast forward a few months, and the editor of Helen is asking me to read a segment of that story at the Vegas Valley Book Festival.
Out loud.
It turns out, finishing a novel is kinda like breaking up with someone.
You put in all this time and energy. You give yourself fully. You let yourself fall in love. Then it ends.
I had plans for this blog. Plans that included posting once a week. Clearly, I’ve failed.
It’s just that life got really busy. There was a wedding and honeymoon and by the time that was done the holiday season had started. In all of the craziness, my blog was pretty easy to neglect.
The logical part of me insists that superstitions are stupid.
The logical part of me insists there’s no such thing as “jinxing” something.
Then there’s that other part of me, the one that pushes all logic aside.
Take this scenario for instance: I get some good news. News about something that’s going to happen in the near future. I could get excited about it. I could celebrate it. I could tell people about my achievement.
I’m getting sick of writing short stories.
Partly because no one wants to publish them.
The rejection letters keep rolling in and I keep shrugging them off, but it does make you start to wonder what you’re doing. (A few weeks ago I got two rejection letters in one day, and one of them came only two days after I’d sent the story out. Two days! It only took them two days to decide they weren’t interested!)
It's not that writer's block is unfamiliar to me. But usually it takes a different form than it has with my most recent short story.
I’m shy.
That’s all there is to it.