Sunday, April 7, 2013

Knock, Knock...

Who's there?

Bad blogger.

Bad blogger, who?

Bad blogger...me! Goodness! It's been awhile since I blogged on here! Forgive me?

No? Ok, I'll accept that. But maybe if I tell you what I've been up to you might understand.

I've been writing. A lot. Unfortunately at this point in my career no one cares. I can prattle on about the novel that I finished and am now submitting to try and get an agent. If you have done this, you know what I'm going through and my talking about it won't enhance your life at all. You know that it has nothing to do with the writing (although it feels like it) and you know that I simply need to be patient and persistent until I find someone who has enough of a connection with my work to want to champion it. Maybe not this project, but maybe they will connect with the next one.

 If you haven't  been through this I can explain it, but I lack credibility. I don't actually have an agent yet, haven't sold a book yet- you will point out to yourself- the novel  must suck because if it didn't, it would have been scooped up by now.

It doesn't suck, ok?

It doesn't.

And the one I am halfway through rewriting doesn't suck either.

And the one that is written but waiting to be rewritten doesn't suck.

And the one I have outlined and character sketches for won't suck when I write it. Well, it will then I'll fix it up to non-sucky. I will. I've trunk filed novels for being sucky. Sometimes I start a column from scratch hours before it is due because what I wrote the first time did suck. I didn't take a freelance assignment because the samples I wrote to see if I could do it sucked. I think I know when I suck.

For the last couple of months I have taken the advice of others and have reformatted my life so that I am sitting and writing for at least six hours a day. Writing and reading and researching and rewriting and learning as much as I can from that seat. (And standing up and stretching every hour or so because I know how painful a wacked-out pelvis or back can be.)

I love it.

I hate it.

It's easy except when it's excruciatingly difficult.

It's what I want to do, what I have wanted to do and I am sitting my ass in a chair and doing it (with limited external reward, I might add).

Which totally sucks.

But hey, that's the ride I got on, pulled down the safety bar and it's pulled away from the launch pad. I have to try, I'll always regret it if I don't and I might be rewarded if I do.

Meanwhile, upstairs...

A couple months ago my husband got reorganized out of a job. For the same six hours that I am yabba-dabba-dooing at my desk, he is working his business at his. Networking, visiting company websites creating profiles and applying for as many positions as possible. He has a nice career as a Customer Service and HR Manager to fuel him, a very impressive work history, an inimitable work ethic and more common sense smarts than any other person I have ever met.

What he doesn't have is a degree. And that is where he often gets spit out in the application process. See, when he ran out of money while going to college, he took a break to earn it...and landed with a company that offered him one job after another that he loved. He never went back to college. When the graduating class that he should have been with were pomp and circumstancing, he was managing a staff of college grads across a couple time zones and several states for a multinational company.

While his classmates were working through entry level management jobs, he was being promoted to a hard-earned Director level position.

It's not our first time doing the Restructure Lay-off Boogie. That great company had to do it back in the mid '90's. The company he landed at here in Kansas City had to do it again six years later. He restructured himself out a  position 10 years after that, and this one? He was there for less than two years before we heard the same line.

He doesn't suck, ok?

He doesn't. Although he is sitting at his desk with limited external rewards feeling like he does- he knows it's a matter of time. He knows that he has to be patient and persistent and work at it to find that job that he wants and can do better than anyone.

Maybe it won't be the job he hears about today.

And maybe not the job he hears about tomorrow.

But he'll get there.

And so will I.

Somehow.






2 comments:

  1. Sucks the big one. And saying it's a matter of time isn't helpful, is it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, it is helpful because it means that a) someone else understands and b) we aren't wrong when we tell ourselves that. :)

    ReplyDelete

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