near wild heaven

This is now, this is here, this is me, this is what I wanted you to see.

I heard from Agent #2, and all I can say is, nothing will ever be simple for me, when it comes to this writing business. She said (I paraphrase) that she admired the work, particularly the novel start I sent. She thinks I am very talented. She really admired a lot of the stories; they were dark and compelling. Their darkness and "ranginess" might make them a tough sell, however. Then she said she would very much like to talk to me about my work.

The compliments are sincere, I know, because I have forever left behind the days when people say nice things to save my feelings. She has no reason to compliment me unless she believes it. She also did not say she was going to pass on me, which is also good. Agent #1 was complimentary, though not as much so as Agent #2, but she still manged to turn me down. I figure if Agent #2 wanted to turn me down, she would have made that clear, because again there is no reason for her to be anything but direct when it cones to that. 

At the same time, she did not effusively offer to represent me and my work, which I must admit is a little dream I had that now must die. Because it seems like perhaps she needs to be "sold" on me and the work still, that she retains reservations about its "sell-ability" despite her stated admiration for my work.  That's the angle I took in my reply to her e-mail, at least. I told her that I hoped her reservations might be assuaged or at least mitigated by the work itself and her admiration for it. This seemed like the best thing to say. Then I proposed that we talk this week, hopefully early, before the holidays take us away until 2006.  

So, again, I'm legit at least. The work is getting good response out there, generating sincere interest. Agent #2 really liked the novel start, which I decided to include after Agent #1 said something about the difficulties of selling short stoiry collections (my finished manuscript). The work is legit and this is good, and gratifying: I"ve really locked in gains since leaving Irvine. My approach has been sound. I believe in the long run that this will mean good things. In the short run, I still has a little ways to go yet.

I'll keep you informed.

posted by: zithereen at December 19, 2005 10:50 | link | comments (2) |

Sometimes I'm embarrassed by how self-importantly false-humble I can sound when, after my burst of nostalgia/whatever it is wears off, I read back on my words. Thank to those who read me lately. I think I've got some new readers and Howard to thank for that, giving me the featured post and all.

So, for you newbies, and even the loyal oldies, here's how this blog has shaken down. I began this blog about two years ago, when I lived in california and attended one of our country more prestigious graduate programs in creative writing. The blog then was partly a catalog of my (over)earnest attempts to negotiate the muck of graduate school for whatever gains I could unearth. And there were many. It was also a sort of sounding board for myself, who grew up in small town midwest, to moon over the strangeness of my home in Long Beach. It really was like living in a foreign country, except that half the people spoke English.

I tried my best not to dish too hard on my colleagues, to turn this blog into a cat-fest where I bitch and complain about what's not fair and why doesn't the famous writer at the head of the room think I'm the best writer ever birthed? Because that kind of pettiness can happen, believe it or not, in the perpetual cabin fever of a 12-person program. It's a huge potential distraction that has NOTHING TO DO WITH ONE'S WRITING. What I tried to do was write with candor, about what went well, about what went tragically (there really was a tragedy), what I learned, what I left there needing to know still.

Then I graduated and moved to Minneapolis to live with my girlfriend. I tell you, I can't get away from this town, right Sattva? The blog ceased being about grad school and more about that first yaer-post grad, as I tried to bone up on my reading, really diversifying myself and filling in a few of the considerable holes in my reading. I also talked a lot about taking my work from its rough form as an MFA thesis (roundly panned by my committee of writers-who-know-more-than-me) to completed manuscript. And now it's evolving again, into a diary of what it's like to take the manuscript and try to attract a literary agent to it, which is where we currently reside here at Near Wild Heaven. It's out at Agent #2, I'm calling her. Agent #1 was complimentary, but she declined the opportunity to represent my work.

Maybe that's why I had that bout of nostalgia. I must say that living in North Hampton, Ohio with Ms. Boop was anything but a Bohemian existence. It was Nowheresville, really out there far away from what I had wanted and hoped for. I guess I am proud now that I didn't relent to despair, even though I despaired a lot and people told me I was behaving like a fool, and a lot of others made up their mind about me during that time. It was very gratifying that they were made to eat shit, so to speak. Because I have built a lot since then, in my life and my writing, and the last two years of it has been catalogued here. Welcome, or welcome back.

posted by: zithereen at December 14, 2005 10:14 | link | comments |

Several years ago I waited tables in a small town in  Ohio. Strange to me now that I recall the time fondly. At the time, I was reeling from a broken heart I had  helped to break.  I was a college graduate waiting tables, housesitting for a prof on sabbatical--literally with no home to call my own. I had applied to graduate school and been denied admission by every program, including the one from which I would eventually graduate. I was driving a powder-blue minivan with wood paneling, that had no heater. Include the fact that I lived a 20 minute drive away, in a village with a woman last named Boop.

I miss that time now, the desperateness of it. I remember driving home on late winter nights, shivering in the cold, bracing myself against it. I felt so far away from everything that mattered to me, suddenly distant from a community I had known in college. For me, at least, I wasn't ready for that, or hadn't given its absence due consideration--this change in my forutunes. Prerhaps it was my father,  a beautiful ugly man, his questioning of me while I was baffled, his want to know where his money had gone, what my debt had been for, what did I want, why didn't I have the words? These were releveant questions to me then, and still now but differently, and I had no answer aside from me wanting to be a writer, and my willingness to sacrifice all in spite of that, somehow. Maybe I am too generous with my old self. I was too stupid to know better, and if I had known then the pain of now, and still no guarantees, would I still do it? Best I did not know then; maybe I didn't have the stomach of now.

The jukebox at work played U2's Acrobat. I think it's a little-known song, but in that album so full of posing and whimsy--and I love it all--this song comes, loud and urgent, sharp, incisive, wanting. Begging. Striving. Some nights I mopped the floors and played this song on the jokebox, listening to its anthem.

>I must be an acrobat, to talk like this, and act like that<

>Don't let the bastards grind you down<

Were these my slogans? Do I believe in slogans, or just a phrase that can actually capture a strand  me and hold it in place, tensed?

Important beacuse I had realized that first time that bastards do exist, and are out there, and unlike those in your family, who grind you down because you are their blood, and they want to thin it, these people grind you down because you are easily ground down, and your choice is to grind or withstand--not to grind yourself, but just to resist being ground flattened turned to powder.

It was all more desperate then, hearing it as I mopped, remembering as I shivered on my way home. Thinking of what I would like to learn, who could help me.  Shivering more.

posted by: zithereen at December 10, 2005 00:03 | link | comments (2) |