the long haul

I just got two more rejections, the most recent in a whole lot of publishing-related rejections this year. Blech. Stick’em in the file with the rest of them, right?

Part of me feels depressed, but it feels sort of ghostlike, a shadow—a dark shadow, perhaps, but a shadow nonetheless—of former publishing related depressions. Such that, although I feel bummed, I don’t really doubt that I should keep writing. That is, the former taunt of “give it up, already” apparently has no power on me anymore. And it doesn’t really seem to matter, in that identity-shattering way it once did, whether or not I ever publish a novel. I can’t be bothered, really with these worries that once flattened me, although I can feel them, like a reflex—the publishing world hits me with a hammer and I reflexively doubt my self-worth—but I notice the reflex has grown weak.

Interesting.

I’m working on novel number 7 right now. That’s right, I’ve completed six novels in my life so far and published none of them, although I have had had agent and editor interested in various of them at various times, none have actually made it to contract. Novel #7 isn’t knocking my socks off right now, and even this doesn’t seem to bothering me that way it seems like it would have. You know, “I can’t write! It’s all shite!” that sort of thing. I just don’t buy those drama-queen statements anymore. Maybe they’re true, but I don’t seem to care. I know that sometimes I love the work, and sometimes I don’t, but even if this novel is one of my duds, even if the whole thing is poo, that is, turns out to be a “learning-novel,” then I’m even okay with that.

Because, for some reason, every rejection this year seems only to have deepened my clarity around the fact that I love to write novels. I don’t know why I do, but I there it is. I’m declaring myself. Even when I hate it, I love it. The compulsion around getting published seems to have been worn away by the mountain of rejections, but still, a truth has remained: apparently, in the absence of any good reason to, I keep writing. I just do. I just keep getting up at five in the morning and writing.

I wrote my first novel in 2001. I ended up with a year off for Sophie’s birth and a year off for Luc’s, but aside from those, since I started, I have written a novel every year. If I keep that rate up, more or less, I’ll be approaching 18, 19, maybe 20 novels by the time I turn 50. And people have been known to write novels on into their seventies, eighties, even beyond, so we could be looking at forty novels before I die, or something totally fucking insane like that. Forty novels!

There was a time when the thought that I might write just 20 novels would have been amazing. And up till recently, if someone had told me I might write 20 novels that would never get published, I would have thought, should I jump off the balcony now? Or wait until after dinner?

But lately, I think even that thought, the thought of those twenty-plus novels, doesn’t matter. I can totally see myself turning fifty and working on number 20, regardless of whether any of them have been published. Which sounds kind of crazy.

But so what? Art is crazy. The bottom line is the fact that I keep writing them, I keep wanting to write them, I probably get better at writing them (and also worse at writing them, two forward, one back), but here it is: I just keep doing it.

I guess that’s what writer is, when it comes down to it. We write. Full stop.

Today, oddly, I’m cool with that. Is this that maturity thing I’ve heard talk of? Maybe it’s Pluto conjunct my Ascendant all this year. It sounds kind of depressing, but it doesn’t feel depressing. Resigned, maybe, sad a little, because I really would prefer to have a bunch of readers for some of these books. But I’m not questioning the validity of the activity any more. I’m a writer and writing is what writers do and so okay. I’m on board. You know what? It’s like Morgan Freeman in “The Shawshank Redemption” (awesome movie) when he goes before the parole board for the umpteenth hearing and he tells them “Stop wasting my time.” Except, of course, being a writer isn’t the same as being in prison, I don’t think, and I’m not an Institutional Man, so maybe it’s not such a good image after all…?

Anyway, um, I’ll see you at my 50th with a stack of 20 novels taking up disk space on my hard-drive, or whatever we have for data-storage by then. Implants, maybe. Or, biological-drives. Maybe our houseplants will keep track of our data. I’ll be the crotchety old gal in the funny socks and lots of lots of house plants.