His Desk, Her Pearls

I've published four books in my working life, and edited and ghost written five more. There's a novel, a history book and two collections with my writing name on it, and a whole bunch more with my name in the acknowledgements. And in a closet at home is an entire manuscript, a novel about a homeless mother and daughter that was never accepted for publication because editors thought it was "just too sad." One editor was "appalled" by one of the characters, a hustler in the pre-Disney Times Square sex trade, who actually played a very sympathetic role in the book. I took my eight rejection letters for that manuscript, and tucked them in a drawer. I kept them because while they all said thanks but no thanks, they praised the writing. That was something. It helped justify the months I had spent with my characters rambling around in my head. It justified my effort to see their lives as honestly and with as much compassion as I could.

One editor was interested in publishing the book. We had a long breakfast in a Manhattan diner, discussing how to revise certain parts of the story. At first, I thought I would rewrite that book. But then I thought about the book tour, the reviews, the whole "after"of getting it published and it was even less appealing than it had been before. I was the sort who could take a glowing review that had one less-than-laudatory sentence, and I would forget everything in the review but that one sentence. Sometimes it was just one adjective! I have heard this is true of most writers, and that many don't even read reviews.

And the book tour. Someone once put it this way: You take people who have chosen to spend the larger portion of their days in solitary confinement with a computer, and then you ask them to get up in front of roomfuls of people and sell their soul. It's a disconnect for some writers. I know there are some who love that public part, but I never did. I was a nervous wreck every time. It always went well of course. As one publicist told me, "Most if not all of the people who turn out to a book signing are supporters. If they weren't, they wouldn't have bothered to come." It was generally true. And I usually managed to get comfortable once the reading actually started, because now I was committed, and soon it would be over. Ironically, I always felt heartened and affirmed when the event was done. But I never learned to love that public part. I'm too self-conscious and self-judging.

So I abandoned that book. The fact that my job became insanely pressured at about that same time (we got a new boss to go along with a corporate takeover) helped me walk away. And then, two years ago in June, I started blogging.

Back in the days when I used to talk to psychics, one told me he saw me publishing books into 2008. "And after that?" I asked. He said, "After that, you'll write for you." Another psychic (this was years ago in the early nineties) told me she saw me writing a particular kind of family memoir, where each chapter was about a specific thing, "my grandfather's desk," "my mother's pearls" were the two examples she gave. I think she saw me blogging before there was even such a thing as blogging!

Writing my life down (even fiction issues from your consciousness, so it's still your life in a sense) has been a way for me to keep sane. I'm not exaggerating. Ever since was I was eight, I've kept journals as a way to make sense of things. I think I only tried to publish books to justify a life of writing. But now I can practice my preferred form of therapy any time I choose, right here. I can reframe my truth as often as I need to, which makes me so grateful to have found this outlet. It is freer here.