Monday, August 29, 2011

Lids A' Popping


Eric was in Malvern selling books at the Great Trail Festival, so it was a different sort of weekend for me. There were no auctions or estate sales worthy of attendance, so the only places I went were purely social. I worked on Saturday, but it was a fairly quiet weekend in cyberspace marked only by sales of the oldest and strangest books in our inventory. One  had actually hung around for FOURTEEN years and, to be honest, deserved to be left on the shelf until it moldered. What I was thinking when I bought that dog is hard to imagine. But the amazing thing was I actually found it. And the even MORE amazing thing was that somebody wanted it.

For years we have commented on the phenomenon of number grouping, which is particularly prevalent on Advanced Book Exchange. When life is good we sell from the newest part of our database. When it’s totally wonky like it was this weekend I’m off on a treasure hunt for landfill. I’ve heard it said that they have multiple servers which is why you can look up a book while you are on the phone with someone who is doing likewise and what you see on the screen is not what they see. If I had a dime for every time that’s happened when Eric phones from the store we could close up shop and retire to someplace nice and cold. Multiple servers are also supposed to be why you suddenly sell a bunch of stuff that’s older than dirt. I have no clue if it’s true, but if the servers are to blame, I guess I just spent the weekend in the depths of server hell. All I can say is, may the flames not be everlasting.

I read a lot this weekend though which is good and my daughter Caitie and her boyfriend Joe were here from Maryland Saturday night and Sunday morning which provided a welcome dash of frivolity, especially since the heavy breather and the dustmop (aka the boxer and the Himalayan cat) accompanied them. The dustmop executed a broad jump onto the kitchen island and pawed a full container of catnip out of a plastic bag. The lid popped when it hit the floor which resulted in me walking barefoot across a beach of magical kitty herbs. Of course the perp was nowhere in sight by that time. When I finally found him he lay blissed out on the living room rug covered in catnip and looking like a Chia Pet with all four paws kneading the air.

There were a lot of laughs this weekend, but this morning I find myself thinking about something Joe said when the conversation turned to my former life as a working writer. It’s well known that the reason I stopped writing was because I sold out and wrote 13 very bad books for the simple reason that three (unsuitable for me) publishers wafted money under my nose. The girls were in college, we needed the cash for tuition so they wouldn’t graduate with loans (they didn’t), so I snapped up every deal that came along and sold my soul in the process. I’ve made peace with it now, but for a long time I drowned in a roiling sea of angst over it. If you don’t believe it just go back and read a few entries in this blog’s first incarnation in 2006 and you’ll see what I mean. In the last few years though I finally I put writing in a box, slapped on a label that read “The Past” and stashed it on a shelf. But then Sunday morning the box fell on the floor and, like the catnip, popped its lid.

“I know why you don’t write anymore,” Joe said. “But the thing is, if you don’t do it again, Tess, what you leave behind are thirteen books you hate. And none of them are really you.”

Well, there’s a little something to think about over your morning bagel, huh?

While cleaning out my office in preparation for the Magical Makeover last month I packed up every remnant left of “the writing life” with the exception of one thing. In 1986 I amazingly won a Women in Communications award for a story I wrote for the Akron Beacon Journal Sunday Magazine about an Ohio church which had decided to embrace the medieval concept of sanctuary and offer shelter to a young woman who had escaped the terrorists who shot her husband in El Salvador. She was, of course, an illegal alien, who had entered the country through Mexico hidden in a cardboard carton. To talk with her I had to bring an Episcopal priest fluent in Spanish. Though he helped me greatly, the real reason the extensive article worked is because she and I connected on a level that transcended the language barrier. It stands yet as the piece I am most proud to carry my byline. And so the award remains on the bookcase in my new office.

But that was a long time ago and there’s been too much water over (or is it under?) the dam since then. The truth is I don’t know if I have it in me anymore to write for publication, especially books. I hate publicity things, hate being in the spotlight, and probably don’t have the stamina to endure rejection and if I get lucky and publish again, bad reviews (or no reviews) plastered all over amazon. Besides, I don’t even know how it’s done anymore – the publication part I mean. And anyway, publishers aren’t  buying from their midlist authors, much less from retired sellouts.

And yet here I am actually thinking about this.

AGAIN.

2 comments:

Cheryl said...

What about this online publlishing I hear about? All us blog followers would probably follow you anywhere BECAUSE we like the WAY you write. I'd pay (a small sum ) to read this blog. Support the Arts!

tess said...

I am laughing my head off over here! What do I want to go putting my neck on the chopping block for when I have you guys? I'm a lucky woman.