Stepping Back

Everyone knows that taking a break once in a while from the everyday responsibilities is important, right?

It’s also so hard to do.  As a parent I don’t make myself  take breaks often enough, and that’s pretty much true of my writing life as well.  

RIght now, though, I’m forced to take a break, forced to step back from the historical fiction novel I’m working on.  I think the only reason I’m willing to do it is because I HAVE to.  You see, I’m off to a writing retreat that includes a manuscript review/crit by a working agent.  That means I gave the agent my piece and now I have to sit on it until we meet in early November.  How crazy is that?  This thing that I know is way underdeveloped has to be set aside – because what good would it be if I show up with a radically revised manuscript to get her feedback on the work I’ve already written?

It’s the same anxiety I have when I leave my children with babysitters – will everything go okay?  Is this really necessary?  Isn’t there something more productive I could do with my time?

But the other thing that I have to do before I go to the retreat is go back to a manuscript I’ve set aside since November.  I didn’t set it aside because it’s lousy (like my first three books – may those files never resurface on this computer!) but because I was focusing on my historical piece.  I have to submit the first 25 pages as a mentorship proposal by November 1st.  Will I feel like I am seeing an old friend?  Or will I wonder why the hell I decided to come to this class reunion anyhow?  I hope I still like it…

I’ll check in with that metaphor in a week.  

Manuscripts

I’m at this point in my writing life – the point where I start using the term “manuscript.”

That doesn’t mean I’m using the term “working writer” but I do have a complete manuscript.  One that real people are reading. People other than my classmates, my partner, my kids, my students.  People who have a career in the publishing field.

You’d think I would feel excited!

And I do, but I also feel nervous.  Most days I feel my manuscript is so underdeveloped I might as well have given them a story written by my eight year old.  I get paralyzed with the fear of being exposed as a horrible writer.  I give in to every horrible thought I ever had about myself, as a writer, as a student, as a person.  It’s pretty horrible.

But then I remember this: when I sent out my manuscript, no one laughed.  No one tore it up and told me to go back where I came from and stop putting words to paper.  And then I remember that even if they did, I would still be putting words down.  here, and in one of my notebooks, and on the sticky notes I can’t seem to stop using.  Asking me to stop writing is a lot like asking me to stop walking.  Yeah, I did it once when I was confined to bed rest, but I didn’t completely stop, and I still walked to the bathroom, and I knew I would start back up again. 

So I go back to writing, and writing when I feel good and, now that I have deadlines for revision, writing when I feel vulnerable.

I may not be Kate DiCamillo, but I can try to write as beautifully as she does.  After all, it’s those moments of getting words down that finally add up to that elusive thing: the manuscript.  

Now, if I could only *sell* it…..