I’m back!!
After 169 weeks working on a major project (a new ERP
implementation for our company), culminating with me being away from home 19 of
the last 20 weeks, 14-15 hour days – including weekends – the grueling schedule
has finally come to an end. Thankfully things
are slowly returning to a new-normal for me, and that includes my alter-ego.
The writer part of me has been muted for the past six
months, and it was absolute torture. Imagine being tied up and shoved
into a sense-deprivation chamber for that long, except the opposite. The part
of my brain responsible for fueling my creative juices and attempted to project
those ideas outward through my writing – still as active as ever – had to be ignored.
There was simply no time for it. Eight years ago, before I re-discovered my
love of telling a tale, that wouldn’t have been a problem for me. But once you’ve
swam in the pool of imaginative expression, there’s no going back. I sacrificed
lots of things over the course of this project, missing my son’s soccer games
and tennis matches, his birthday, getting his driver’s license, my wife’s
birthday, not attending the DFW Writers Conference, WRiTE CLUB, and many many more, but having to turn my back on the
characters and stories that pleaded for me to come out and play – that was
probably the hardest.
I’ve had a lot of people comment about the toll it
must have taken, being alone in a hotel room all that time. Frankly, apart from missing my family terribly,
the last year or so (when the travel was the heaviest) I rediscovered my
affinity for comfortable silence.
Introverts don’t mind being alone…in fact they prefer it…so it should be
no surprise that the stillness of an empty hotel room wasn’t a problem for me. What
does surprise me is how many people find silence so uncomfortable, and go out of their way to drive it away. The worst
is when they resort to banal conversation to eliminate our serenity. Maybe they’re
afraid of what they discover if left alone with their own thoughts? Who knows,
but for me, this turned out to be a surprising benefit of this project. I can’t
remember a time in my life when things were that quiet. I’ve never lived alone
(college roommates, shared living spaces, etc.) and once I got married…well…family
life is the exact opposite of a quiet living.
You know another kind of silence I’ve adapted to? The
non-existent rejection letter. One of the writerly duties I managed to continue
during my self-imposed exile was sending out query letters for my already
finished manuscripts. It seems that between the last time I queried (back when
I landed my first agent) and now, more and more agents have adopted a don’t
ask don’t tell philosophy. Meaning – they don’t bother to send rejection
letters any more, they simply let the silence speak for itself. While I don’t agree with the practice (to me,
that’s just pure laziness), I have come to grips with what it says about my
writing.
I don’t have what it takes to crack the crystal
barrier.
That doesn’t mean I’m throwing in the towel. No sir! I
might not have the skill to craft a query letter that will sway an agent my way.
Or maybe my books aren’t mainstream enough to take a gamble on. Whatever the
reason, I’m relying on feedback from countless CP’s and beta readers…and my own
gut…all of which tell me that there IS an audience for what I’ve crafted. So…so
long traditional path…and hello self-publishing.
Am I disappointed? Sure. You bang on a door long
enough you begin to see your-self as part of the door…instead of just someone
requesting entry. Many of the people I’ve become good friends with via the
blogosphere have gone on to have their books published and realize their
dreams, so it’s easy to feel left behind. But that’s something else silence
provides…perspective. The circumstances of my life don’t fit the role of your
typical writer, so my expectations need to change. And I’m okay with that.
More to the point…I’m comfortable with it.