I just checked the mail. It was lucky I felt like it, because it had started to rain and I had left the driver’s side window open in my Jeep. The rain was light and hadn’t soaked the seat yet.
The mailbox is several hundred feet uphill from the house and most days I walk it, but I didn’t feel like getting dribbled on, so I succumbed to the Americal plague, and drove the distance to my own mailbox.
Inside were two items for me. One was a part I had ordered to repair the dish washer.
The other was the latest rejection in my search for an agent. No, let me re-phrase. Stories are rejected by editors. Agents decline to represent.
I admit to tears. I am built that way. I claim justification:
Today is a dreary wet day.
Earlier, I had written an emotional passage in my latest novel, where Phil, the father, must stop in his instinctual rush to rescue his son, so that he can do the smart thing,
I am working at my office desk today, and my coin collection is at hand. I picked up a two-pence coin, one of many coins I returned with from my last trip to England. Thinking of the coin, ‘tuppence’, I imagined what it would be like to explain to a small child what the coin was, and having the coin at hand that he could touch and see. My own children are too old for that, and as yet, I have no grandchildren. The ache to explain the wonders of the world to a child overcame me. I wonder if that is a core component to my personality.
I am too confident of my own writing to give up now, but I have to wonder, will I ever find my market? Will I ever find a way to get my stories, my characters, into the hands and minds of the people who would enjoy them?