This is now, this is here, this is me, this is what I wanted you to see.
I reached page 100 in my draft of this novel about a month ago, and though I had designs on pushing through and cmpleting the chapter I was writing, I found that I could not sustain the energy it would take to write another 10 pages. Not a bad run--sixty pages since mid-January, and this again while temping. I had reached this curious point where my ideas had been evolving and growing at a faster rate than I could process and integrate them ito the book...I was looking beyond the present chapter more and more, to the one that came after, and what might happen in the last fifty pages. Any substantive idea is a good thing, and shouldn't be turned away, but I became so increasingly preoccupied that my interest in the current chapter was waning. I think I was having a grass-is-greener moment. Why deal wioth the present muck of actually writing, when I could think about how good things will be in another 75 pages!
But, also, was having crisis in other areas. For me, temping and writing (and trying to make modest gains in my reading) was like a game of Jenga. Really. My energy and focus was like the game pieces, and gradually, as another piece was removed, I found it more difficult to focus on reading. It's a labor, this kind of reading I strive to do. It's hard to do it on the side, hard to maintain the proper energy level. This frustrates me since there are still so many holes in my reading. So, to complete the metaphor, the life of temping were the fingers, ever so carefully removing the game pieces of my time and space and energy. I started and abandoned at least a half-dozen books, could not focus on my own work. I wanted the TV--24, Sopranos, even the funniest show on television, American Idol. It's all good entertainment.
The Egypt decision, thogh terribly stressful, came at a good time. I couldn't focus on my writing with this decisionlooming, so I was free not to feel guilt about not writing. I was mulling this decision, being pulled from one side to another. I found solace in a collection of essays on fiction, not on fiction itself, and there was something of the compost heap to this reading, constantly turning over in my head what Charles Baxter was identifying, naming and describing, all of which had occurred to me, in less well-developed ways. He filled in what I had only started to voice; I was like a babe in his writerly arms.
And now I have returned to the chapter. It was tough going at first, always is after a delay, but it held up well enough to my deferred scrutiny. I printed up the pages and found myself rewriting phrases, adding to sentences, sharpening what was on the page. This is, in many ways, my favorite time as a writer. It's like peeling away the rough layers to find what's really there underneath, what's better, more precise, more fully realized. It's exciting to know I'll reach a point when this entire project will undergo such transformation. And it will happen in Cairo. A few more weeks, and temping is done, and that lifestyle is overwith, and I'll be teaching again, at perhaps the best university I've yet taught at. Class sizes will be downright reasnable. And, in the 21+ months I'll be in Cairo, I will actually be teaching for about 12 of those months. Time, space, energy...and a keen challenge in Cairo. I wonder what awaits me there?
It's been, rather suddenly, almost a month since posting, and my public has been clamoring for more words, worrying over me. Am I, they wonder, with child (again)? Living the life of a secluded, acquitted pedofile in Bahrain? Perhaps biding away the time in central Africa?
Actually, no. Do not worry. But I had been mulling an enticing and interesting offer to teach for two years at the American University in Cairo. That's Cairo, Egypt, not Cairo, Ohio, Cairo, Georgia, or even the Golf Club at Mirage City, aka Cairo Egypt/Orlando Florida. It was a fsacinating offer but one I considered with some trepidation, for all the same reasons that I found it exciting. It's a foreign country, a much different culture, a foray again into teaching, the opportunity to travel widely throughout Europe and Africa, and even Asia, which isn't very far away. All this sounds good, and it is. There's more. No taxes! Free apartment with utilities--apparently the apartments are very nice, too. And, get this: one of the neighborhood where I could live is Zamalek, which is an island in the Nile River.
As it turns out, Near Wild Heaven could be coming at you from a much different place. I took the offer.
I spent much time over the winter making sure I had something to show for myself come spring. Well, now it is spring here, finally...a perfect 77 degrees today. And on a Friday! This meant happy hour at a bar near the river. We would have sat on the deck, but it had been utterly invaded by fratty-looking people and their yards of beer. Inside it was for us. On the way home, I blabbed to my gf about my plans for upcoming chapters of the book. Talking about it aloud reminded me how much of this has gone on in my head. I'm generally tight-lipped, about this and other things. I think I've enjoyed especially keeping the writing and revision process more private, after the constant stress of submitting work to smart people in Irvine. Of course, I can take pleasure in this privacy only because I feel like I can figure out what a story needs, what a man or a woman in my story needs, and how to get them there. I owe much of this confidence to my intensive experiences in the OC. It was terribly stressful and loneosme for me sometimes, since it seemed like Ihad been pulled from a cornpatch to wander among the Ne Yorkers and Californians in my group. But I tried to cram in as much as I could, thinking that I could sort it out later. It's now later, and I have (I think). If nothing else, I like how I go about things these days.
I've thought a lot about the conditions under which works is undertaken, written, completed, brought to bear on the world. Pierre Valieres was one of many to write a book in prison. Do yu think it influenced the way his book was written? Do you think the life that had led Vallieres to prison also contributed to this book? I think of Dostoyevsky and I know that I do not know enough about him (note: purchase a biography, soon), but I do know that he struggled and suffered greatly in his life. Yet he still wrote these monstrously long novels. I think of those I have known who have had "ideal" conditions for writing--a fellowship, say, months off in the summer. I think of fortunate moments in my own growth, and times of attrition. Mainly the thing seems to be to go on in spite of everything. This alone separates you from almost everybody. Just go on despite bad fortune, or despite good fortune. If you do that, your conditions--your life, your state of mind, your Ph balance, whatever--will find is way into your book like you can never plan. And maybe then I wind up with something surprising even to me.
This week I had an audition for a place called CaptionMax. I think it's run by a guy named Max, really, since the guy who shuttled me from spot to spot during my audition referenced a "Max" on several occasions. I wish I had a name like that, something with a dual meaning that could be cleverly used. Anyway, this place services both the hard of hearing and the visually impaired. Ever wonder where closed captioning comes from? I have. I've wondered if there's a real person typing away out there, and there really is. I saw a roomful of them. I auditioned for a job helping the visually impaired television watchers of America. If I get the job, this means I watch a television program--ranging from pottymouth Sopranos to The 700 Club--and write an accompanying narration that describes the significant unspoken action. Then I would retire to a padded room, where I would record this narration onto the television program itself. And, like, that's it.
I was due to meet Jill at 10 am on Tuesday. Five minutes before the meeting, I remembered that I was supposed to bring a writing sample, which I had left at home. I made a panicky-like phone call to my gf, who searched in vain for my stock of photocopied articles on Patrick McCabe. Here I was, all gussied up, wearing even the Florsheims my father had bought for me back in high school (which I had worn maybe a dozen times in a dozen years), with no writing sample. Turns out it wasn't such a big deal, since Jill, who carried all the intense, Type-A air of an administrator, handed me off to a guy whose named started with a J. She did not hand me off soon enough for me to jabber, in pitious fashion, that I had, in a "very high school" way, forgotten to bring the sample. Fool! She waved off my concerns, but reproached me with her dark little eyes and fashionably arched eyebrows. Perhaps I had not needed to share my forgetfulness in the first place, but there you have it.
Have I mentioned the workspace? It's a significant upgrade on my current situation. The offices take the second floor of a renovated warehouse in, what do yo know, the Warehouse District, near downtown. I do love the urban work setting. The walls are bricked, which is also cool, and the windows are large, allowing as much natural light as possible. I recall an adequate amount of natural light coming through the windows, and that I felt comfortable in there. This is much better than the flat, flourescent lights in my current work setting, the uncomfortable chair (I'm on my third now, and each day I have to fix a loose screw...meanwhile a lifer had a new, ergonomically correct chair delivered yesterday, wrapped in plastic), the general feeling that sitting there is punishing for my body.
So, the work would engage me on some important level, though the writing does not seem terribly difficult. I would like to think that all my training can get me this job, which Ithink now I would almost certainly accept if I got an offer--next week, they said about that stuff. I got to hear my recorded voice again, which is always a strange experience for me as I'm sure it is for you. In fact, I got to her my recorded voice in real-time...as I was speaking. I know this is common in broadcasting but it was new to me. Fortunately, the quality of the recording was very high, so I heard my voice more clearly than I ever had. I liked it. I liked my voice. I think it was "neutral" as the job description stipulates---that uber-broad Ohio accent finally pays off--but also, you know, interesting.
No further news yet on my search for a skeleton, although my girlfriend asked one Chuck Baxter, former teacher of hers at the University of Mini-Soda, who informed her that skulls empty of decompasable matter are actually quite light, the cranial bones fragile. Worth considering. Plus, the upcoming chapter featuring the skeleton is maybe further away now than at any recent point. It's still maybe two chapters off, but I keep filling the current chapter with more stuff. Theme: what the narrator sees that she should not see, which she chososes to keep secret from everybody. She's kind of learning how to be a secret keeper. Later on she'll learn why secrets are worth having around, at least in her world.
My month's booty, as it were: 10 computer-typed pages, bringing the grand typed total for this daft to 90. I also wrote over 50 pages in my notebook this month, and some of that was plugged into the typed pages. Most was not, though. All in all, a very productive month.
I received a nice letter from the Stegner people this week. They still addressed it "Dear Writer," much as they did four years ago when I applied and didn't get one. Still, the letter I received this time was clearly meant for a small group of writers they considered seriously. I won't rewrite the entire letter, but here are some highlights:
"[We] wanted to let you know that your application was read with great care and appreciation. It is through the vibrancy and commitment of work like yours that the program is able to depend upon an applicant pool of immense talent. [...] While you may not have achieved your desired outcome in this instance, we suspect that you will be successful on many future occasions in other circumstances. Furthermore, the fact that we are unable to award you a fellowship this year should not be taken as a prohibition of your reapplying, as we look forward to following your growth as a writer."
That's about as positive a review as I could have hoped for, aside from being one of the lucky ten (only five in fiction) who get these fellowships. It's immensely encouraging. I'm not at that place anymore where I am babied. Teachers and agents and people like the Stegner committee might not feel compelled to be cruel, but neither are they obligated to say a single thing they do not mean. That's a big difference in my world since going to Irvine. Beforehand, I couldn't tell how honestly my teachers spoke with me about my work, and that alwas bothered me. I wanted a frank assessment, because I really wanted to know what my teachers thought. It was important for me to get it unfiltered and grainy. I had difficulty finding that until I went to UCI. Granted, GW and others can be baffling in their allegiances to one writer's work over another's (it makes for delightful post-workshop grumbling, however), but I always knew what they think, and usually they wre right. GW in particular branded me a UCI grad with his sober assessment of my thesis. All of this has taken awhile to adjust to. It's intense. But it's also honest and in that way it is liberating.
Anyway, I have been interested in how this novel would be read by the outside world. Early returns are good. It's earned me the interest of an agent who, again, owes me not a single false compliment, a positive letter from Stegner. It's heartening, especially as I have written this throughout my soul-fuck temp time.
I heard back from the man at the Science Museum:
This is indeed an unusual request but I am
sad to say it lies outside the scope, purposes
and mission of our biological collections
according to my supervisors. You might contact
medical schools in the area for possible
materials to examine. Good luck.
Where can a normal guy like myself get his hands on a
human skeleton? I liked the suggestion of Museum Man
and will have to look into it in the coming weeks. Oh, spring!
Interviewed yesterday for the Egypt job. It seemed to go well,
but I have felt that way before and I am still temping, so...we'll
see what my options really are. But, they would fy me there
(and back) for free, with one free ticket home each year. They give me
three months' salary when I arrive. Someone meets me at the airport
and drives me to my flat, which is free (no utilities either).
They will ship my belongings for free from the US. It's a three course
load per semester...but only 13 students per class. You teachers
out there know how sweet that is. The exact pay I do not know yet.
The director, with whom I interviewed, claimed not to know the
exchange rate off the top of her head, plus there is some experience-related
pro-rated salary cocktail she claimed to know nothing about. Frankly this
concerns me, this fronting all the perks but not bothering to come prepared
with even a general ballpark as far as the actual pay. She says she'll get
back to me next week with an estimate, when she is back in Cairo.
I will wait and see.
Otherwise it's been a clump of confusion-clearing this week. No MacDowell Colony
residency for Zithereen. It's a hard place to get into, and even Pulitzer Prize
winners have to apply to go there. So I was up against the best. I got a
rejection that was complimentary in a non-form-letter sort of way. They said I
should apply again next year. I've learned that the rejection letter matters, thanks
to Geoffrey Wolff. He told me that UCI has several different rejection letters,
ranging from please apply again to all the best with your future endeavors, that sort of thing.
When I was rejected there in 1999, I got a "nice" rejection. And what
do you know! It mattered. He remembered me when I applied 3 years later.
But I was bummed in '99 when UCI rejected me, and I was bummed
yesterday about MacDowell. And freakin' Crate magazine couldn't use my
story. AND saw on the Stegner website today that they've chosen their
fellows for next year and I'm not it. It's a 10 in 1400 shot, though, so I don't feel bad--just that little
lump of disappointment to swallow down.
There's more to come. By late April I'll know what's what, where we're headed.
This is the life. There was no work today, and it's a beautiful, sunny and brisk winter day, late in the season. The temperature stayed below freezing, but there were no clouds or wind, so this week's snowfall began to melt off anyway. The streets run with the shiny melted snow. I slept on the couch kast night, as I sometimes do when my girlfriend is away. It's like, Why bother going to bed? I'm plenty comfortable right here. I did wake up in the night--TV on, teeth not brushed--and grabbed a pillow from bed. Then back to the couch.
I woke up this morning from a dream where a man I didn't know was dying very painfully in front of me. In the dream I knew who he was, but once I woke up, I only had the dreadful memory of his familiarity--but I could not remember who he was. The TV was on so I watched a morning show and checked the weather. After coffee it was time to write. About that. lately I've found refuge in exploration--in the notebook, where any idea can be jotted down and abandoned, or investigated to its fullest. I've been doing a lot of that lately, so the novel has become like a hydra in my mind--one body, many heads. I've written 36 pages in my notebook since March 1, but nothing more solidly formulated on the computer until this morning. I really like falling into this exploration, recognizing the need for it and just relenting. I can more easily think of my characters as equals--which, as people, they are. Even the minor ones. I don't overdetermine plot or story. I can allow connections to occur in what might be called a natural way. Now, the relative formlessness of the notebook seems to be congealing, forming solid chunks for me to write from. I started a new chapter today, just a few hundred words. But those few hundred words vould be .5% of my draft of this novel.
Found some good deals at the Unique Thrift Store today. Unfortunately, they do not allow you to try on clothes, so you have to guess. I bought some cool shorts that barely fit around my belly. It figures. I've been a complete pig since my birthday. Still I was like, Where did that come from? I need to start running again. If I could run a mile back when I smoked a pack a day, it should be no problem-o now.
Today I wrote perhaps the strangest letter I have written so far in my life. Technically, it was an e-mail, but I think, given our times, that it qualifies. Here it is:
I write to you with what may be an unusual request. I am a writer who is working on a novel. As it happens, an upcoming portion of my novel will feature rather prominently a human skeleton that is discovered and cared for by the protagonist. I have not had any contact with a human skeleton, and I think it would behoove me to do so as I prepare to write this upcoming section of my novel.
Welcome to new-look Near Wild Heaven. The avatar you see to the right is of a chunk of trinitite, which plays a small but pivotal role in an upcoming chapter of the novel.
I loved Forster's Where Angels Fear To Tread, so it was with regret that I had to recently suspend reading Howards End. I know it is a much longer book than Angels, and requires more patience, but very lttle of it surprised me in that satisfying way that Angels did. The opening chapter was promising enough, but then Forster backed away from that promise and engaged instead in what seemed like character-drawing. It was like reading a nearly stagnant-lake. Lots of idle characters and snappy irony, but in service of what? The first 80 pages seemed to bloat, whereas in Angels the story takes surprising turns from nearly the first moment. The class commentary and dripping irony served a story rather than their own idle needs.
Probably I've become a less patient reader in recent months, since I have less time for devoting to the stuff I really care about. But I have also decided that I don't need to soldier through books that dissatisfy me any longer--or, at least, for now. It's okay for me to put aside a book that isn't working for me. I can try later and meanwhile move along to another book--for example, Colum McCann's Songdogs.
Last night I was watching a movie, Vanya on 42nd St, and decided that I needed to get my hands on a human skull. The movie had nothing in particular to do with this decision, except for being wonderful and making me feel writerly and introspective as I watched. Upcoming chapters of the novel, the ones following the discovery of trinitite (or at least the revelation of it), will feature a human skeleton rather prominently. My narrator is not the sort to be creeped out by such a discovery, but just the opposite. She's so curious about the skleton that she visits it many times, talks to it, touches its visage with her hands, gently, carefully, with a kind of reverence--what kind I'm not sure yet. And I knew last night that I needed to do the same thing, to put my hands on a skull, a set of ribs, the pubic bone and kneecaps. Any clues where I can do this?
I don't want to be grandfatherly and tell you what to do with your work. I think you should write what interests you, what sustains you and what you can sustain. Two from my class, Sam and Elizabeth (whose novel is coming ou next month, who you've probably heard about), they worked on novels but in much different ways. They're both beautiful writers, again differently. Sam's work in particular seemed to instantly shoot through the roof the moment he started on the novel--as if selecting the right project made all the difference. I learned a lot witnessing that. I was on a different path. I needed to cut my teeth on stories. I needed to write a collection, which eventually I did do (even if I can't sell it right now). It was just the right time and place for doing so . Now I'm onto this novel, liking it. Couldn't have written it before finsihing the stories, and can't say exactly why. Just, you know, do your thing. Let the program fit your needs.
Today is the prettiest day in these here parts in a long time. I could nearly feel the full smile of the sun on my skin as I walked outside at lunch today. Strangely, this morning the weather man warned of poor air quality and said that youngsters or people with heart conditions shouldn't go jogging. And then it turned out sunny! Winter's nearly over.
Tonight is Survivor and tostadas night at Casa Zithereen.
Perhaps the ice has broken loose in other ways. This morning I received an e-mail from the good people at the American University in Cairo. Last November, I sat at this very desk and pounded out a letter of application for a job teaching composition...in Egypt. And they kinda bit. My girlfriend applied but has not yet received the e-mail I received about wanting an interview, so I told her she could tag along as my concubine.
Would I actually go to Egypt? Possibly I would. Frankly it's not at the top of my wish list, but at the moment it's at the top of my prospect list, which is really just a carbon copy of my progress-finally-made list. I'd much rather be at Stanford, or in Louisville, or even in England doing the fellowship there. It would be a real adventure, going to Egypt. If I'm lucky, I'll arrive just as the flu pandemic begins. After all, they've been tossing infected swans into the Nile.
I'm writing all out of order now, with the novel. The final section I originally thought would be twenty pages long, tops, paced similairly to the last chapter of Housekeeping. I've become increasingly preoccupied with what will happen in this section, eve though I haven't written the bridge of a hundred or so pages that it will take to get there...and the more I think about it, the more I want to capture these ideas, and the more prominent the final section becomes. I'm seeing all sorts of interesting possibilities, overlaps with stuff I've written or ideas I intend to write in the coming weeks and months. It may be that I'm writing a lot more that I'll ever actually use. I do love how this continues to evolve. Writing a novel is an odyssey.
For all my extremely dramatic complaining, I have written a lot of this novel as a temp. This is important. Some day I will stop temping, and I will be on to something else, and while all the many hours spent sitting in this incredibly uncomfortable seat surrounded by gray partitions will fall away, I will still have all this time I will need to account for in some way. My anxiety would be multiplied if I had temped for six or eight months and done nothing, or little, and had to start from the beginning in spring or summer. I think I've come a long way in a short time, but to think of being at the start again, with only an idea...
Here is the gist of my progress. I had an idea a few years ago, workshopped it. One eminent writer liked it, the other told me to trash the gimmick and fly solo. I wrote stories instead, and thank goodness. They're a great place for learning, relatively low-risk since they might only pile up to 20 or 30 pages of practice, as opposed to a novel, which can swell to 10 or 15 times that length. I'd like that investment to actually go somewhere beyond moral victory. I sat on the novel until I finished my collection, and all the while this idea simmered someplace in the back of my head designated for ideas I may someday wish to bring to the fore. Eventually, I came to a compelling story and concept--and by these things I mean a story that I thought would keep my interest for a few hundred pages. I think I've had to rediscover that part of my writing, or reclaim it--that it's got to interest me if I'm going to the mat over it.
I won't say I had the story all figured out, not at all. I'll say that I had a story with enough momentum for me toplunge forth deeply into it. I'll say that the idea was rich enough that it would give way to new ideas...I love this part especially. When I can sense the ideas I don't have yet. I've made a lot of forward-march progress, taking a big gulp, 82 pages to date. My notebook is full of ideas, paragraphs that might appear in a hundred pages or not at all. The notebook is my free place, where I can investigate any idea, or sketch a chapter or storyline. By the time I get to the computer, I'm typing draft 1.5 onto the screen, sifting and adjusting as I go, using the notebook for guidance.
Lately I've reached a point where I've had a lot of revelations about the book. It's like, you start with a quality idea, and you work on it, and questions are presented in the text. You answer the questions and take the book in a direction (all the while knowing you ac extricate yourself from any choice you make), and the focus of the book pares down. The longer you go, the more that falls outside the scope of the book. I think this is how you arrive at a storyline, a plotline, a set of characters. I'm ass-deep in a lot of revelations, things I'd like to dig deeply into. I think I'm concerned that I don't have all the time right now that I want. Poor me, I know. I'm just really burning to write this thing, because i actually feel like I'm reigning it in, when it wants to race ahead, taking me with it.
Recently I happened upon the blog of another UCIer who happened upon this blog last summer, as he prepared to cross the country for Irvine CA. He probably considers me an MFA ancestor of his, since in MFA years, two years is a life cycle. (Case in point: his second years had just been accepted--as my class' replacements--when I departed for MN). If that jargon escapes you, then you are not an MFA student, sorry.
Feeling...I dunno, strangely pinched off. It is as if the world around me has got its steel-toed boot pressed against my neck. It tells me that all I have to do, if I want to take a full breath, or buy a new air of shoes or a winter coat that hasn't belonged to my girlfriend since the 8th grade, or not worry that a six pack of beer and a bouqet of flowers is going to keep me from paying my bills--all I have to do is name my price. Will I do a lame job for, say, $40,000 a year? That is many thousand more dollars than I have made in any other year of my life, ever. N0? How about 50? With that, you can buy that Honda Element you've secretly wanted. You can buy a bunch of new clothes and cookware and indulge in all sorts of other materialistic fantasies, like elaborate cable packages and a large collection of music. You won't have to be a temp at age 30. You won't have to explain that to people. You can get that gym membership, trim up, drink good wine, get a massage every month, get some health care, get those cavities filled before your mouth rots.
This is all a symptom of staying up too late last night because Sideways was on HBO. I'm not the sad-sack loser of Paul Giamatti, but I empathized to a saddening extent. I am prone to fits of the blues anyway. The blues, mind you, are not meant to be confused with my father's balls-out manic depression. For example: at age 30, my father locked himself in our basement for a period of months. I barely remember this, since I was only 3. I just remember the outline of sunlight in the blinds, on those occasions when I was down there with him. I wonder now, what did he think about all that time? Did he think he was slipping off the face of the earth? Zithereen at age 30 is desperate for a job that doesn't feel like one big empty gesture. He wants to publish a freaking story. He's a little bit alarmed that others of his year(s) are publishing, and he keeps getting nice notes attached to rejections. Especially since he knows his work is pretty good, that he's worked it over long enough to be able to say that and know it's been vetted through much humility and the pronouncements of big-deal writers. He is also desperate to find time to write his novel. He does so now during lunch or free time at work, on the weekends, but this makes him crabby and tired a lot, and there are days when he feels remarkably worn down because writing a novel takes an immense amount of energy and brain space.
No? How about 60, then? $70,000?
I am almost finished re-reading Robinson's Housekeeping, which a glance at my trusty archives reveals I was reading for the first time last February. Then it is on to Howard's End, my second Forster book. I've been meaning to get back to him and his sly cultural-commentary, obseravtional self. Very funny, subversive stuff. Looking forward to it.
Yesterday at work I left my "Decaf is the Anti-Christ" coffee mug on full display at the kitchenette. This was an error. My cube is near the kitchenette, but because rooms full of cubes are made for loneliness and alienation, I may well have been on the other side of the room. But I was able to listen as someone approached, an employee of Human Reources, who chirped in what has become an increasingly annoyting Minnesota accent all about how my mug was not appropriate. She was talking to somebody else, who I can't say, but this somebody else seemed to have only marginal interest in what the chirping lady was saying. I kept hoping she would tell chirping lady that the mug was funny, or least harmless, and to zip it. But this did not happen. All the while I'm thinking that I needed to quit my lame temp job and go wait tables, which at least is stimulating, would get me some exercise and wouldn't be so lonely. I stayed long enough to hear the chirping lady talk herself out of hiding my coffee mug in a cabinet. I think she wanted to do this because the kitchenette is across from a small waiting area, where employees who have benefits questions await help. I'm thinking that maybe the chirping lady was concerned that my mug would offend somebody. Then I heard her say she "didn't want to make a big deal out of it," and she left it where she found it!
Spoke to Agent #2 and met a new cagy breed of human: the agent. She liked my work a lot, but thought the collection would be impossible to sell as a debut. In part this is because collections are a tricky sell anyway, especially tricky for a debut...and mine seemed to lack a kind of ineffable quality that might make it appealing. This said, she likes the stories--they are "dark and compelling"--and while she thinks places like Knopf won't publish it but should, she may publish several of my stories in the literary journal she edits. She requested "dibs," and I gave them.
She also really loved the novel start, all 40+ pages, and this is really why I think she has taken an interest in me. She's really behind it, and I think she wants to take a flyer on it right now, in the hopes that it finishes as its started. She made the point of telling me that she generally does not phone people's homes to say she loves their work and is interested in it--she made this point while having phoned my house to compliment my work--so I take all of this as good. She gave solid counsel to me, but she is not my agent. She has not "actually" taken me on. But I'm going to let this ride because I think this can only lead to good places. 2006 is looking like a good year. Now, if only I can get enough sleep at night...
"They travelled for thirteen hours downhill, whilst the streams broadened and the mountains shrank, and the vegetation changed, and the people ceased being ugly and drinking beer, and began instead to drink wine and be beautful."
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