Okay, here’s my story: I wrote The Frog’s Song, from the land of fire and water about our adventure in Hawaii. It is 40,000 words. An agent said, “Interesting…bring it up to the sweet zone of 85,000 to 95,000 words and I will review it.”
Holy Moly, that’s twice what I have written. I didn’t even know there was a “sweet zone.” I wrote back, “I don’t know if I can do it.” And here I have been espousing the way of the Disney Imagineers. They sometimes don’t know if they can do an assignment either, but they say “Yes,” bang their heads on their desks and do it.
The agent wrote back, “You CAN do it.”
I need to get over thinking I have to be brief so as not to bore people. I have to get over believing that writing is a self- indulgent endeavor. I once heard a psychiatrist complain about a writer—this was way before I considered being one—but his comment stuck in my craw. “Writing is self-aggrandizement.”
You know what?
That psychiatrist was full of shit.
Here was a supposed healer cutting people off from a source that could bring comfort in times of trouble, joy in times of triumph, and an opportunity to sparkle ordinary days.
Daughter Darling says that by adding more words the book will flow better, and so I begin thinking. I wonder when I began believing in the power of belief. I wonder when I became metaphysical. Life evolves slowly so that while once we were standing on the edge of a tar pit (or in it), we are now on the North Bank. Evolution dictates that when events happen you either change (evolve), move, or die. We chose moving, and, I believe, in the process changing.
And so I plant my butt in the chair, stare at the page or computer screen and begin, again.
After all, it is half-written.
"But listen to me. For one moment. Quit being sad. Hear blessings dropping their blossoms around you." --Rumi
There's a mountain of sorting in our living room. It's Legos. DD's "Happy Bricks"
