Storytellersunplugged

Note: If this blog seems out of date by the time it’s posted on the 25th, it’s because I’ll be in Michigan, trapped in a household where the microwave is about as technically sophisticated as it gets. Anyway, I wanted to welcome new writers to the blog, as well as wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Here in New York we received an early Christmas present from the Transit Workers Union in the form of a strike. While thousands of people around the country are unemployed, millions more live without health care let alone pensions, they feel not only are they entitled to retire at fifty-five with half-pay, they are demanding respect. Respect? They must be forgetting where they work. This is New York; you want respect, go work in Milwaukee. Or better yet, upstate where whole towns are being closed down due to lay-offs! But fear not, there are some of us whose holiday spirit will not be dampened, such as the family who put out a Freddy Krueger Santa holding a decapitated head, alongside a Christmas tree with bloodied Barbie Dolls for ornaments. They claim it was to protest the commercialization of Christmas, but I think it perfectly demonstrates the emotional sentiment many people in this city now feel toward the transit union’s labor leader, Robert Toussaint.

Okay, got that off my chest. Now on to the business at hand.

I just hosted a book party for myself and I have to say, it was well worth the effort and expense. I’d never thrown a party of any sort before, so when several of my friends suggested I do something to celebrate the release of my book, The Unwelcome Child, this month, I initially dismissed the idea. After all, since this was a first novel it wasn’t likely that I was going to see anything in the way of royalties, and if I were to add up all my expenses so far — well, let’s just say I couldn’t justify spending any more money on this project. But as the release date of my novel came and went, and life continued to go on just as it always had (almost as if I’d never written a book at all), I realized that the goal of getting published wasn’t just about making money. If I looked back on the long, hard journey that got me to this place, I had to acknowledge that if The Unwelcome Child only sold two hundred copies, for me, just holding onto my faith long enough to see it through was the real success story.

I’ve always been a pessimistic person. Probably one of the most negative people you’re ever likely to meet. It’s like I have this tiny demon in my ear always whispering, ‘you suck, you suck you suck’. The only good thing about the little bastard is that he spurs me on to prove the contrary. Unfortunately, it’s an ongoing battle and if it hadn’t been for those long breaks when I felt completely defeated by my imagined inadequacies, I’m sure the book would have been finished within six months instead of two years. I think this may be true for many writers, and is probably a chief reason why so many novels are never finished, let alone published. Personally, I used to suffer from the delusion that only the most brilliant of writers could get published. I’m here to say, not true. Because although there are writers out there much more talented than myself, there aren’t nearly as many as stubborn. I didn’t give up, and that was what needed to be celebrated.

So, I had my party and was nervous as Hell. The little demon was there with me, telling me to back-track on reading from the novel as promised in the invitation. ‘Don’t be pretentious. You’ll just bore everyone. They’re more interested in the jumbo shrimp than having to sit and listen to ten pages of prose,’ he said. But then I considered my stepdaughter, who was there also. She had given birth to a beautiful baby boy two months before, and I don’t think Wyatt Earp was as quick with his gun at the O.K. Corral as she was with her packet of baby pictures. It was touching and sweet, and perfectly right. Of course a new mother wants to show off her baby, I thought, and so should I mine. I decided to go ahead and read.

In the beginning, I stumbled over a few words. There was a child in the room, and he was somewhat distracting, but as I read on I became aware that my audience was truly listening. Not only that, they were enjoying what they were hearing. I could tell by their expressions whenever I looked up, and by the applause when I was finished. It was only then did it occur to me how much I loved these characters I’d created, and that by not celebrating myself, I wasn’t celebrating them. After all, they had taken the journey with me. It was only right that they received a round of applause, too.