Different Life, Different Writing

This blog entry is dedicated to my Uncle Cyrus. He was my most diligent reader. Within minutes of posting a new entry, I would receive an email from him, always about how much he loved whatever I'd written. Once, upon reading an excerpt from my novel, he was thrilled to see I'd named a character after him. I hadn't, in fact. I'd just been poking fun at how common the name is, but didn't have the heart to tell him so. This is the first entry I am publishing without him here to read it.

I miss you, Cyrus. 

         

I see it has been nearly two years since I last wrote a blog post. 

I thought maybe it had been a few months.

Shit went down, y'all. Things that stopped me from writing*. Stopped me from blogging.

Things that felt shameful to say here. To say at all.

Even now, as resolutely as I promised myself to just spit it out and move the F on, I hesitate.

Here goes.

I got a divorce.

How harsh that word is. How crass I sound just blurting it out like that. But to say anything further right now is just too difficult.

All I will do is paraphrase a quote from Amy Poehler's memoir:

"Getting divorced is like taking a picnic blanket, all set with food, etc, and flinging it with all your might into the air, then watching things land where they may."

~~~~~

The last eighteen months have consisted of every last aspect of my life being flung high into the air. Some things landed over there, some are still spinning in the air, some never made it back.

Some days I feel broken. Some days my healing is palpable. How can you be broken and healing at the same time, I often wonder.

At a dinner party on the weekend, someone asked, "Are you still writing?"

My answer was a series of mumbled half-sentences. I'm not working on novel two, not sending out novel one. I am not writing in the way I once was- all day, every day. But I am not not writing either.

Writing is, in fact, one of the very few things that is still the same in my life. I am writing all the time. I never stopped. The reason the question stumped me is that the writing has changed.

For the last thirteen months, I had a full-time job. No more all-day writing. But when shit went down, I had to write about it.

I would wake up many a Saturday morning and, like a diarrhetic person, just barely made it to the page before everything spilled out.**

I hated most of it. I used to write about Pakistan, a country I haven't lived in for 26 years. With a buffer of a quarter century and 8000 miles, it was easy to invent stories, invent situations, have fun. I'm not putting myself or that writing down (or trying not to at least). It was just different.

Now, I write from inside the eye of the storm.

Half the time, the experience I'm trying to convey is not even 24 hours old. Plus, with my new therapist's insights, even my most basic interactions are fraught with part self-awareness, part new questions, part self-confidence, part self-doubt.

When I write about a new interaction, a half-successful standing up for myself or speaking my mind or doing things a fraction differently than before, my heart is still heavy with confusion (transformation is exhausting, y'all).

I don't fully understand what happened the night before. I write about it haphazardly, through a thick fog of half-understanding, half-pain and confusion. Worse, I don't have that pithy closing with which I usually end, that little verbal badoom-choom which used to inflate my ego (and mask my true feelings).

This new writing is frenzied. My hand hurts from writing so fast, unable to keep up with my brain. Most days, I stop halfway and just leave the piece unfinished. Where is this going? What am I even trying to say? It's such a mess. I don't even know what I'm doing with my life, what exactly do I think I'm writing about?

In fact, the fact that I'm writing about me, my life, is the scariest thing of all. Fiction was great. Non-fiction- actual personal stuff- is a scary mother-fucker.

And I don't care. About any of it. That it's hard, scary, shitty.

Some part of me recognizes that this writing, this period in my life, these half-complete pieces, are essential. To what, I don't yet know. I just know they are.

This writing is raw. Unprocessed. Unfiltered. Unpolished. It is- deep breath- imperfect. And it is real. And that's all writing needs to be.

I have never had less to show after a day's writing. I have never felt better.

~~~~~

*writing in the way I used to
**apologies for the number of un-genteel bodily functions referred to all over this blog. Unfortunately, writing comes from the body as much as anywhere else.

The Voices in my Head

Last fall, I was watering my lawn, admiring my garden when an idea hit me so hard I had to drop the hose and run up to my office and write it down. That uninvited bastard so forced her will on me, she kept me chained to my chair till 9 pm on a Saturday night. On and on she went, for days and weeks. She made me work Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Who does that?

Before I knew it, I had my second novel.

A half-formed embryo of a thing, but a thing nonetheless. Enough to build on.

Then life got hectic. I went to Pakistan for two months. I recovered from that trip for three months. And then I hid from writing because starting a second novel four months after completing the first is like lying in a heap at the finish line of a marathon and being told to lace up, you have five minutes before you start your triathlon.

And then she came back, book two, because she knew I was ready.

I resigned to her will and went to my study to write. Nothing. I jotted down my ideas on post-its. I made a chart of all that I knew happened based on the first draft. Jammed in ideas I had for the second. It was how I’d written the first book. Planned it before writing. Made sure things went my way. But I wasn't actually writing anything.

I was pissed. I was here for book two, why wasn't she coming out already? Though I hadn't written in months, I had been thinking about it the whole time. I knew just what to do.

Still nothing.

Finally, I wrote in my journal: “Why can't I write? Am I scared? Why is there such resistance?”

And then, I wrote perhaps the most useful and helpful of my writing career: "Am I making this all about me? Should I listen to you?"

And then, and I'm not kidding, I wrote: "Okay, talk to me."

I KNOW. I've heard other writers talk about this all the time, about hearing their characters, and knowing them like they're real people. I always rolled my eyes. What a cliché. Not possible. You're the writer. Write. Be in control.

But that day, out of sheer frustration, I gave up control. I listened. And she spoke to me. 

This character started telling me about herself. Things I couldn’t have dreamed of. Things I couldn’t have made up.

I KNOW. I may as well don a drapey dress and tell you your fortune over my crystal ball.

But that’s what’s happening with the characters I met in December- so briefly, like those rain-drenched chance encounters of Bollywood, those instant-connection people you know you’ll be good friend with even at that first meeting.

But it takes time to get to know someone. Long coffee dates. Over months and years.

So that’s what I’m doing. Having coffee. With the voices in my head. The things they tell me! The lives they’ve lead. And though I may have created this world, they live in it, they reveal it to me, slowly, over months and years.

Here's another giant cliché of the writing world that's finally hit home: "Writing is like driving in the fog with your headlights on. You can only see two feet ahead of you, but you can make the whole journey that way- two feet at a time."

It's the scariest thing I've ever done. No post-its. No check lists. No outlines, no deadlines. 

Just blind faith. 

Trust. 

In the voices in my head.

The Man I Love

As promised, the big reveal from the last blog post, the man I love. The love of my literary life is Vikram Seth.

I first saw him on across the room in the center of a bookshelf: A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth. The sheer girth of the spine sent tingles down my own- it took up the space of three books (I have abandonment issues and really like long books, so my "friends" will stay with me longer). Vicky did not let me down. 1400 glorious pages. Family upon family, character upon character who I grew to love and hate with delicious satisfaction.

I first met him years later. The CBC Radio Book Club was hosting a talk with Vicky and you had to write a 100 word piece about why you should be selected. Best writing prompt ever. I arrived an hour early, sat in the second row (you have to play hard to get). It was the most satisfying hour of my life. Better than my first bite of masala dosa dipped in coconut chutney, better than watching the sunset bobbing on a surfboard in Trinidad, better even than the most satisfying series finale ever, Breaking Bad. Every word he uttered was a gift just for me. Every word he uttered made me laugh or cry or grunt with satisfaction.

I searched the crowd for him beforehand and it was a while before I realized the rather unkempt man leaning against the stairs leading up to the stage was Vikram Seth. He could have been a student volunteer, so casual and unpretentious was he. Messy hair, loose, comfortable, slightly wrinkled clothes. And what melted my heart was how casual he was about the whole affair. He admitted right off the bat he was tired from the book tour and wouldn't likely be coherent (not true) and it made me feel so much better that you can be human and still brilliant.

During the Q and A, I found my feet moving to the mic of their own accord.

"Feet," I said, "Sit down this instant. We are introverts, we don't talk when there are more than two people present, let alone in a group of a hundred people at an event being broadcast across Canada." But my feet didn't listen. They placed me before the mic.

I asked Vicky to sing "Awara Hoon," a Bollywood song he'd mentioned in his memoir, From Heaven's Lake. He didn't want to. The crowd made him. His voice was liquid gold. Literally- a strand of melted gold emanated from his body and coated my soul.

Afterwards, as he signed my book, I apologized for making him sing.

"Oh, you're the one," he laughed, and drew a musical note by my name. Bliss.

                                                                    ~  ~  ~  ~  ~

Ten years later, in January 2014, I saw that he was attending the Lahore Literature Festival. Though I had been in Lahore weeks earlier, I went again. I will travel to the moon for him, what's a fifty minute flight? Same disheveled hair, same unassuming manner. I sat in the first row (because the organizers wouldn't let me sit in his lap) and as the session came to an end, there was time only for one question. My hand shot up. There is something about Vicky that makes this introvert a ballsy bad-ass ( as proven by the fact I just said ballsy on a blog my mother reads).

I was given a mic. I reminded him of the last time I saw him, ten years before, and the song he sang.
"I'm sure I didn't comply," he said.
"Oh, but you did." Who was this cheeky brat, I wondered, even as I continued, "You proved that your singing is as amazing as your writing."
The audience went wild, began chanting for him to sing.
"Well, if it was in Vancouver, I'm sure I had some liquid courage," he said, pointing to his glass, "In Pakistan, all I get is tea."
I responded, "Don't worry, I've arranged for that, check your tea cup." I didn't recognize myself. I was bold, brazen, like it was just the two of us, not 1500 of us. I had never behaved this way in my life. Love does that to you.

He did end up singing a verse or so but without the gusto he'd had in Vancouver. I worried- had I offended him, made him do something he didn't want to do?

At the book signing, I apologized once again for making him sing.

And then the most wonderful two minutes of my life ensued:

He laughed off my apology, asking my name.

"Phiroozeh."

"Firozi, like your earrings."

Yes, Vicky, you worldly genius, firoze like the colour, turquoise. You see me, you know me. Let's get married.

I noticed he was writing my name in Urdu. We laughed together because neither of us could figure out how to spell the last syllable. When he spoke to me in Urdu, it was jarring because I'd discovered him in Canada,  met him there, loved him there and for a minute, I'd forgotten we were in Pakistan at all. It was jarring and it was amazing. The two spheres of my life connecting through the medium closest to my heart.

The whole exchange was so casual, so comfortable, like we were at home on the sofa, not at a national literature festival being jostled by fans wanting his attention.

I don't want much from our relationship. I'm a realist- I know I'm married and he has a partner. It's not about that. All I want is to live in his left breast pocket and follow him around the world. That's all.

Karachi Made Me Cry

I had no idea it's been this long since I posted. Okay, I had an inkling. Truth is, my seven weeks in Karachi left me with not so much writer's block as stimulation overload. I came home so saturated, I had no idea where to begin. So maybe I'll write a blog entry that is like my hometown: a congested, haphazardly laid out, not-easy-to-follow ode to Karachi that is nevertheless intriguing, charged with an energy unmatched, unmatchable by any city in the west.

Uncle and cuz and beer, a Sunday afternoon tradition

I stayed with my Mama and Mami, my mum's brother and his wife. They had the house painted in honor of my arrival, my cousin cleared out of his bedroom for me, set it up with a desk he thought I might like to write at overlooking the garden. I almost cried. They'd worked till 11 pm or 1 am to set it all up, then awoken at 5 to welcome me to Karachi with hot tea and all my favorites, bhakras, batasas, nankhatai. Later in my stay, I was the one to be up all night, fretting about how to ask them if I could extend my already long-by-western-standards stay by another couple of weeks. Finding the perfect words, I approached them, heart in hands, and they laughed: "Why would you ask? This is your house."

This was my house indeed. They live where I grew up, not my official home, but the one where I spent most of my time. Being there this time was a double mind-bender: first, I could still see my seven year old self playing teacher in this hall, burning rotlis in this kitchen, playing kho-kho here, house-house there, hide-and-seek, hop scotch, cricket, that game with the elastic bands that exercised your gymnastic skills- what was it called? Where was it from? The photo above is taken in a room where we acted out pivotal scenes from Hindi movies we'd seen the night before, me in my Nani's sari, my cousin stumbling around with a bottle of Johnny Walker (filled with water of course), pretending to be a sharabi (because those 80s heroes always were).

Second, so much of this house and this city has worked its way into my writing that being back there was like visiting the set of my novel- Mohatta Palace? You mean chapter 10, scene 4. Saddar? Oh boy does my character get in trouble there. And then, in that same musty dusty bazaar, I heard the vendors, "Madam, madam, come, come, t-shirts,  branded, Gucci, Polo, come come." They said the words, my words, which were in fact their words, scratched into my notebook on my last visit. Art imitating life imitating art in an unbroken, mind-bending loop.

I attended the Karachi Literature Festival and the Lahore Literature Festival. They changed my life- my writing life, so yes, my life. Seeing Pakistani writers onstage day after day, discussing issues I myself had faced or was facing or would face one day, I felt myself tearing up at every panel. Because even though I am as yet unpublished, I am a writer. I am relating to writers. Not buddy-buddying with them, that will come later, but when they spoke at the panels, they spoke to me.

Sadly, this photo, part of the KLF's official FB collection, captures me not
 intellectually considering whatever's being discussed or even shedding a graceful tear but puckered up and bawling.
I've blown it up extra large for your enjoyment.

 My favorite writers were there, writers I had discovered on the impersonal Amazon recommendations page, now before me in the flesh. Writers who had nudged me, unknowingly, to write my own novel, sure you can set it in Karachi, yes, pepper it with Urdu and Gujarati, it's what we speak here. Of course it can just be a story, not a Story With A Political Message That Must At Least Twice Mention Drones/Taliban/BinLadin.

 I shopped till I dropped- from the weight of the books I bought. So many that the security guard stared at his X-ray machine gave me a suspicious look- all he could see was two rectangles, the tops of the two stacks of books in my carry-on.

You can't find books on Pakistan here. And being there, among academics and authors, I developed a thirst to know more, more about this county I left at 11 that continues to haunt my imagination and my writing. I also wanted not to sound like an idiot when I one day was on a panel at the KLF about my own country. So I came home with 110 pounds worth of books that will take me who knows how long to get through.





I tried my utmost to be Pakistani. To speak Urdu. Not gape at things. Undo my accent. I went places alone, places they'd never let me go alone before. I felt a certain thrill. Like I belonged. Then I'd come home and hear about a bomb blast or attack and feel just so naive, so out of my league, an outsider after all.

Not only did I speak Urdu, I was spoken to in Urdu. They thought I was one of them. Then, on the plane from Dubai to SFO, the Indian air hostess greeted passengers, mostly in Hindi, row after row until she reached me. "Is everything okay, ma'am?" The wall clanked down. I was back to being racially ambiguous. It pinched my insides.

The gorgeous Mira Nair

At the Lahore Lit Fest, I heard Mira Nair talk about Salaam Bombay as it is the film's 25th anniversary. My tears nearly short-circuited the iPhone in my lap. She had been a documentary film maker and then, for SB, she used that format that came so naturally to her and lived among the slum kids she would portray, lived like them, learned the nuances of their lives which then made this movie that is still acclaimed a quarter century later. I cried because that's what I am doing in going to Karachi. I live the life that my characters will one day live. I always thought writers should hole up in a room and make shit up, what's this go-here go-there thing I keep doing? But she showed me there is no right and wrong way to do this, this creating business, you just do what you are driven to do.


In my next entry, we will talk about the man I love:

Bonus marks if you can tell who he is from this bad picture of a picture

Zoo

We’re told there’s an order to things. Horse then cart. Write, then publish. Later, readings, then hobnobbing with other famous writers.

My life was happening completely out of order. I was writing a book, then I met a writer who soon became famous as her debut novel won prize after prize (Nayomi Munaweera's Island of a Thousand Mirrors, coming to America in 2014), then I began editing my book, then I started doing readings thanks to said famous writer, and then I tried publishing my book.

 The cart and horse were not just out of order, they were in different zip codes and I lost track of who was supposed to be where, myself included. After a few months, I decided to put things on hold at the publishing end (because spending day after day sending your novel out to agents is like spending day after day holding your eyelids open and sprinkling chili powder into them) and focus on a new writing project.

I became comfortable with the idea that my first novel would be practice, would likely never be published and that was okay (full disclosure: when I say ‘became comfortable’ I mean to the extent that you become comfortable with a Bengal tiger sitting on your coffee table while you try to watch TV- you try to look over it but you can never not see it).

But then things started happening.

You should know, at this juncture, that there is a battle in my mind over telling you this. In one corner, the superstitious Parsi aunty in me warns, "Tobah tobah, Phi, you shouldn’t say good things aloud before they happen or else najar laagsay and they won’t happen!" 

They're always watching me, these Parsi women who live in my head

In the other corner is the optimistic Canadian in me saying, why not celebrate small victories, eh?So strong is this superstition, there’s even an English equivalent: don’t count your chickens. Oh heck, the Canadian wins.

Here’s what happened.

A few months ago, I decided to go to Karachi but I was apprehensive: last time I went, I had a novel in hand, a lengthy list of specific questions to ask specific people. This time, I had no novel, only a vague idea of meeting people, learning through their stories the history of Karachi, of Karachi Parsis, which one simply cannot research at the libraries of California. Yet the evil garden snake who lives in my mind hissed incessantly: Isssss this trip simply an elaborate (and expensive) avoidance tactic, Phiroozeh? Oughtn’t you instead be writing novel number two? It’s fiction, dear girl, you're suppossssssed to make things up. What’s all this nonsense about hearing people’s stories anyway? You’re not a biographer. 

A few weeks ago, a new writing project came to me, and a cliché I always rolled my eyes at played out before me: I became possessed by the idea and have furiously working on it ever since. The garden snake was at the ready: is it really a good time to go to Karachi now, Phiroozzzzeh? Shouldn’t you just focus on this story and see what comes of it?

I had to admit, the little critter was getting to me and I began to ponder what the cancellation policy on my ticket might be.

Proud mamma must pull out the wallet photo at every opportunity

A few days ago, a friend mentioned that when I attend the Karachi Literature Festival, there will be Indian publishers there and I should tell them about my book. Book? What book? Oh yeah, I have a book. I wrote a book. I edited and edited (and edited) and polished and perfected a book.

Yesterday, I received an email from Muneeza Shamsie, a huge Pakistani literary icon. I actually thought I was still asleep and dreaming (never check your email before your morning tea). She is also the mother of Kamila Shamsie, my all-time favorite writer. The way Rohinton Mistry changed my world by showing me Parsis in novels, Kamila changed my world by showing me Karachi in novels. Turns out, I had been e-introduced to Muneeza by a dear, dear friend because of my upcoming trip. I now have plans to meet said literary giant in Karachi next month.


                                                               ~~~~~

And so I find myself at this place of out-of-orderness. I have a completed manuscript in hand, a second one begun, countless readings under my belt, including some I've hosted, fifteen rejections the first manuscript from US agents and now, the scent of possibilities blowing from the east.

It begs the question, are you a writer because you’re published or are you a writer because you write (all day, every day, day after day)?

All I know is I've lost sight of the cart and the horse and I feel liberated. I can have a complete novel whose status is pending, and still work on the second one (by all accounts that’s exactly what you must do after completing the first one). I can go to Karachi with no specific agenda, relinquish my obsessive need for control, for clarity, and let life lead for a while. I can meet Muneeza Shamsie, revolutionary for her empowerment of Pakistani writers writing in English because I AM a Pakistani writer writing in English. I can attend the KLF and see what happens (ie. see what happens when I stalk those Indian publishers and turn on the charm). I’m not counting my chickens (oh come on, this blog post turned into a zoo long ago, what’s one more animal), I’m just … watching the coop from a safe distance, making sure they mother hens are keeping them warm.

It’s a fine balance between doing what you can for your book and then letting it go and letting whatever you want to call it-nature/the universe/life- take its course.  

I learned long ago (and like most lessons learned, promptly forgot): you can make all the plans you want, put your horses and carts in whichever order you deem fit, but life will still do what it wants in the order it wants.

Because life is in charge of this zoo.

                                   

Patience is a Virtuous Bitch

It's been 11 weeks since I took a deep breath, procrastinated, took another breath, procrastinated again, and then sent my manuscript out into the world. 11 weeks, 8 email one-line rejections (make that 9-I got one more between writing and editing this blog entry), 4 snail mail rejections, and 2 I've-read-your-MS-but-it's-not-for-me rejections.

Though I'd read the statistics, heard the stories, I had thought I'd be different. I thought my top three agents would not only swoon over my work but fight over me. Three weeks in, they all rejected me within a week of each other. My work, not me. My work.

But I had set my goal to 100. I was going to query 100 agents before moving on to plan B. Last week, I realized I'd queried 40 agents in 10 weeks. This is a bit too fast, a bit too eager. So I've decided to wait.

They say patience is a virtue and that may be true, but she's kind of a bitch about it, kind of righteous in her all-knowing-I-know-what's-best-for-you ways. We can work as hard as we want, but at the end of the day, she calls the shots, she decides when our big break comes. For the sake of any children reading this, I'll call her the B word, but in my head, she's a word that starts with the next letter over.

Once you succumb to Patience, once you resign yourself to her as your boss and life-decider, she blows your life open.

You see that you have more stories in you. Stories that have been waiting to come out except your brain was a car crash site, a shut-down highway crawling with ambulances and fire trucks and traffic eeking by the peripheries (it should be noted I just did a 24 hour road trip to LA) giving these stories nowhere to land, to feel safe. But now that you've calmed down and accepted reality, accepted that waiting is part of the game, they're making themselves known.

There is also the fact that this, your first novel, may have been...sorry I need a minute...it may have been...deep inhale...it may have been...just crawling out from under my desk... practice. It may have been the one you learned on, cut your teeth on, a three-year, life-consuming practice ground that, when you were in it, felt like the real thing, but with 11 weeks of perspective, may not be the one to get published. 11 weeks ago, I'd have laughed at you. 11 weeks ago, I was confident, I was the exception to the rule, I was invincible. Now, I believe them.

The ray of hope is I'm not the only one. Okay, so this particular ray is fighting its way through a giant storm cloud because it's not a lot to hang onto, but it's there, if you look hard enough, long enough (okay, Patience, I get it. You're everywhere and I should accept you. Now go away, this is my blog).

I recently attended an all day workshop where I learned from people who had been writing for 20 and 30 years that:

a) none of us knows what we're doing (there really are no rules to writing)
b) it never gets easier (book 1 nearly kills you, book 2 gets harder, book 3 harder still)
c) none of the above stops us from doing it again and again

Last year at this time, I was actually keeping my calendar free assuming that, two months after submitting my work, I would be on a book tour, sipping champagne from a Parisian balcony below which my adoring fans gathered hoping I'd drop a crumb of my chocolate covered strawberry that they could take home and preserve for posterity.

In reality, I'm sitting in a cafe in Fremont (Desi capital of California, life's not all bad) working on my next story. Because some of you may remember, I can be very stubborn. Or maybe I really am a writer. Verdict's still out.

But then it occurs to me that at this moment, I am sitting across from a dear writing buddy who is part of a fierce clan of writers who hold me up every day. And later I'm going to teach Bombay Jam which fills me with inordinate amounts of happiness.

So it turns out despite the soul-on-a-skewer wait for publication, life is going on.

Take that, Patience.

So When's Your Book Coming Out? Part 2

Thank you all for the well wishes on my last blog entry, about my recently completed manuscript. Now the question on everyone's lips seems to be, "So when's the book coming out?"

Since you've stuck with me this far, and since many of you have told me you're vicariously living through the bumps and triumphs with me, I will fill you in on what's next.

The immediate next step is finding myself an agent. In the US, you can't just go knocking on publishers' doors on your own as a newbie writer. Why not self-publish, you ask? In a word: marketing. I could self-publish but I simply can't self-promote the way a publishing house can. I can't get my books out past California let alone to Norway or South Africa. A dear friend, you remember, the one who won the Commonwealth Prize for her debut novel, Island of a Thousand Mirrors (available next spring), told me this very thing. So that, in a nutshell, is why I'm starting with the traditional publishing route and if that fails, there are other options I won't go into here.

So on August 14th, I send out my first batch of queries (quite apt, as it was Pakistan's Independence Day and that is the setting of my novel). This process was years in the making. I had begun crafting the perfect query letter 1.5 years ago, which, in less than 10 sentences, must encapsulate my 100,000 word novel in a way that's enticing enough for an agent to ask to see the whole manuscript. This letter, this one paragraph of this letter that does this, took me two years on and off. I read countless books on how to draft the perfect query letter and even paid someone to critique it. The last three weeks were spent showing draft after draft to my live-in marketer (hubby), who kindly but firmly pushed and pushed till we were both happy with it.

I then turned to my list of agents. This process alone took me 8 weeks, as I had to find people who were a) suited to my type of novel b) had actually published something in the last year or two and c) were taking submissions at this time. Many reputable agents simply don't take submissions, especially unsolicited ones.

This list of carefully researched agents had been made 1.5 years ago. Some were no longer agents. For the remainder, I had to personalize the second paragraph of the query letter, telling them how I know them, which of their clients I've read and loved, etc., based on my research.

August 13th, I was ready to submit. I got to work, logged onto Facebook and made a big proclamation that today was the day. It was not the day. Without going into too much detail, that was the day I broke up with Hotmail, which took all my careful formatting and blew it to smithereens. So I called tech support (hubby) and that night we got me a gmail account like most grown-ups.

August 14th, letters went out. Nails were bitten. Email was compulsively checked.

Visual approximation of my life at the moment.

August 15th. Two responses. Hallelujah. Clouds parted, angels sang, harps strummed.

At least that's how I had pictured it.

In reality, because of the way gmail is formatted (remember, this was my second day with gmail), it shows you the first sentence of the email on the main page.

Both emails were very sweet in turning  me down.

This was very exciting. I have two rejections under my belt. I'm a real writer. And they actually wrote no, instead of leaving me wondering forever more.

These two rejections really made it official. I had been hiding from this process for months, years really. I posted that my MS was done last week. It was done in July. I just lingered and procrastinated because I knew the worst was yet to come.

And it's here. And it's not bad. At least not so far. I know it'll get worse from here because Stephen King had his first FOUR novels rejected and J.K.Rowling got 100 rejections etc. But I can't worry about that right now. Right now I can only take it one day at a time, one rejection at a time. I've been planning for this phase for so long, I know just which holey shirt I'll spend my days and nights in, I know just what I'll mutter under my breath as I walk around the house in a daze, and I know just which bugs will begin crawling around in my unwashed hair.