Moth to the Flame

            I do it to myself, really.  Like a moth to the flame, I can’t help my propensity for persistent self-immolation.  Always doing things the hard way, stubbornly independent, I make mistake after mistake, blunder after blunder, because that’s the only way I know how to learn.  But when it comes to my writing, I apparently haven’t learned my lesson.  I never learn my lesson.  I try not to keep making the same mistake, the mistake of getting my hopes up, and most times I’m pretty successful.  But then there’s those times when I relax my guard, when I leave my heart open, and I allow the notions of “hope” and “faith” and “belief” to shove cynicism and pessimism aside, when I let blossom the dream that got me started oh those so many years ago.  And inevitably, always, always, always, my open heart is crushed and pureed, as I flutter stupidly into that flame, thinking that this is the time, this is the time when my ship will finally make dock in the harbor of my aspirations.

            My ship did come in the other day…only once again, its name was “Titanic.”   Sunken dreams.  Holed hopes in the hull of my belief…in myself.  You see, I got a nibble from a literary agent last week.  She had read the first two chapters of my children’s book; said she really liked it and wanted to read the rest of it.  In the parlance of writers and agents, she’d read a “partial” and was requesting the “full.”  This is significant.  Most times agents don’t read beyond the first paragraph of a query letter before they decide to reject you.  Actually having someone express interest in your work and seeing more, is just the opening your writer’s heart needs to assert itself against the cold hard reality of rejection after rejection after rejection…  And I got sucked in.  I started daydreaming that this was the time, it was MY time at last, that once the agent read my entire manuscript, she would be so dazzled that she would phone me with an offer of representation.  That she would so love my story and my writing that she would just HAVE to go to bat and advocate for its publication to editors at publishing houses.  Because you see, the truth of publishing is that editors won’t even LOOK at your work if you don’t have an agent representing it. 

            So the agent in question had asked to see the “full.”  And all I had to do was wait, over an interminably long weekend, for her to get back to me this week.  And she did.  Only instead of a phone call, she sent an email.  Kiss of Death.  An email could only mean rejection.  I stared at the message with her name, unable to open it for minutes.  I knew.  And sure enough, when I finally clicked on it, there was the usual: “Thanks but no thanks.”  She thanked me for the “opportunity” to read my work.  She “admired my creativity” but she didn’t “fall in love with it enough.”  She assured me that her opinion was “entirely subjective” and that “another agent might feel different.”  She then “wished me success” in placing it elsewhere…  Please, spare me the platitudes.  I’ve been at this long enough that the romance is long since over.  I’ve been this close before, only to have my work ultimately turned down.  I don’t need encouragement or kind words; I need a fucking sale!  I don’t write to make a name for myself, or boost my ego, I write because I have to.  It’s something I’ve always done, something I always WILL do, and in the deep recesses of my bruised and battered heart, I KNOW I am a good writer.  And yet, there it was, once again, staring at me, another cold slap of rejection.  God I hate that word.  Rejection.  Bite me.

            So where do I go from here?  Well, I’m a moth.  I will continue to stupidly flutter to that flame.  I can’t help myself; it’s what I do.  I’m a writer, a good, but hapless writer.  Like Mr. Holland and his opus, my brilliance will probably never be validated or acknowledged; I will make my name, my mark, for things other than the one passion that drives me.  I’m a writer that writes, that has written thousands and thousands, hell, probably millions of words, that nobody will ever see…and I will suffer and cry and vent…and cry some more…but I will still fly to that flame.  And burn again.