Big Fear

Hi. I rock.

I was reading through my journal archives today, fixing some stuff. People with Netscape should be able to read my archives now, so that's good. Anyway, I kept seeing all these entries where I bitched about my novels, how I needed to revise them and get them in the mail. Countless entries. All these self-imposed deadlines which I failed to meet.

The fact is, the thought of submitting a novel terrifies me. That should be obvious to all of you; it's certainly obvious to Marissa, who's been an absolute angel on this matter-- nudging me, encouraging me, prodding me, sometimes nagging me in just the right way. Telling me I get to have a nice dinner the first time I send out my book. Helping me with my synopsis.

But I've got the fear. The big fear. I don't even know what I'm afraid of, precisely. M'ris says having a novel rejected is way worse than having a story rejected. That might be true. The Warner Contest rejection didn't hurt me much, but in that case I reasoned that the novel was unpolished and that the synopsis was dreck-- of course they form-rejected it. So maybe it is just rejection fear. Maybe it's that this is the next big step in my career, symbolically, at least. I really don't know. The fear operates on some sub-rational level which is inaccessible to my higher faculties. So... I drag my feet. My first three novels aren't so good, I used to tell myself; I'll send out a book when I think I have a good one. Obviously, I think Genius is good. So I revised it. A couple of times. With long periods of languishing in between revisions. Not long ago I did my final polish, doing handwritten edits. I felt good about myself. I was in the process. I was working on it. Then I angsted forever about writing a synopsis. After weeks, months, of that, I wrote one. It blew, it blows, it sucks. I tried to read it today and cringed. It's lifeless. It's dust. It's inert crap. M'ris critted the synopsis weeks ago, and gave me advice. I put off revising the synopsis. After all, that's the last step, aside from incorporating my handwritten changes, which won't take all that long. After that, it's just printing out the pages and putting the thing in the mail.

Terrifying. I've avoided it. This has been the source of a lot of my low-grade anxiety lately. My own cowardice about this book.

So today, I got pissed. I got furious with myself, reading those old entries, realizing I wrote the draft of this novel 20 months ago. I've been living with this novel for almost exactly as long as I've been dating Meg! And the manuscipt's mostly just sat there!

I resolved to correct this matter.

I took my synopsis to Pergolesi, but I actually didn't even look at it. I wrote a whole new synopsis, and it rocks, I love it. It moves, it's interesting, it tells the story the way I want it told. I have no idea if it's a "good" synopsis, but I know it's better than the last one. It's shorter, too, and less labored. When I finished it, I felt like the king of the world. I admitted my fear (finally), I faced my fear, and I bit its goddamn head off. So I'm going to type up the synopsis, polish it, write a cover letter, finish incorporating my handwritten changes into the manuscript (the first three chapters, anyway, which I'm sending out with the synopsis), print it out, and put the thing in the mail. I'd really like to have it ready by Saturday, so that I can walk down to the post office with Marissa and drop it into the slot while she's here. She's been so good about lighting a fire under me, it'd be nice to have her there to see the ritual culmination. I don't know if I'll be able to finish in time, though-- it's sort of late already tonight, and I'm going to a show tomorrow night, I think. But the book will go soon. The book will go before I leave for North Carolina on the 9th.

And I promise, I promise, this is the last time I'll mention a deadline for putting this novel in the mail. You won't have to read that empty promise again and again. Because it's a full promise, now. I'm tired of being afraid of this.