It's been a crazy month
We've been back from Nova Scotia for less than 8 weeks. It would be therapeutic for me to go back through my blog entries for those few weeks, but I'm almost afraid to do it, so much has changed.
There's no question. This book deal, the run-up to it, the final burst of writing to get a proposal that met the standards of my amazing agent, the flurry of emails that left me with a ruined gut, a wicked run of insomnia....all of it together has knocked me right off my horse and into the dust.
It's time to calm down, take a few more breaths, and remember who I am and what I'm up to.
When I got up this morning, I was greeted by old faithful doggie, who is now so sick that he doesn't even bother to stand up to greet me. His eyebrows flick around with the same adorable little clowny hat shapes they've always had. But the eyes themselves, they're dull. He can stand up, but unless it's for a bite of food (and he can only really hold down a bite or two), he'd rather not bother. He'll go outside the door to defecate, but only if you make him. He'd rather stay inside and go under the kitchen table.
Ten weeks ago, doggie and I ran up and down the ocean beach, wondering how we would get back to that place to live out our days. Doggie isn't going to make it. In fact, he's not going to make it through tomorrow. I'm going to help him see things out while he's still got just a shade of dignity left. I just made the phone call.
I need to pull myself out of this starstruck slippery swerve that's leading me to a place I don't want to go. If I can't, I won't make it back there either. The book is exciting. The hype is exciting. I can't tell you how it felt to sit in a publishing boardroom, listening to a roomful of people try to convince me that I should "let" them publish me. But now that's in the past. I need to get back to remembering all those important little details, like where this book came from in the first place. It didn't get started in a boardroom. It got started while I was lying on a huge piece of rock that was jutting out into the water, seaspray wetting my face. The connections that made all these editors so excited flashed through my mind while I lay there on that ancient boulder, shielding my eyes from the brilliant sun. My most ambitious goal of all for the book should be that I want to make a few others find their own rock and lie across it, drinking deep, finding the connection to the planet that is the only thing that makes this daily grind worth cherishing. Royalty rates and mass paperback editions should not be entering into it, unless they help me get closer to that goal.
Doggie's bowing out tomorrow. I'm bowing out later. His day is fixed, but mine's still a matter for speculation. It's coming, though. When it does, I hope it won't be the hype I'm thinking about, nor all of those emails from New York. It'll be that rock, that spray, and that sun that fills my mind. At least if I've got any sense it will be.
There's no question. This book deal, the run-up to it, the final burst of writing to get a proposal that met the standards of my amazing agent, the flurry of emails that left me with a ruined gut, a wicked run of insomnia....all of it together has knocked me right off my horse and into the dust.
It's time to calm down, take a few more breaths, and remember who I am and what I'm up to.
When I got up this morning, I was greeted by old faithful doggie, who is now so sick that he doesn't even bother to stand up to greet me. His eyebrows flick around with the same adorable little clowny hat shapes they've always had. But the eyes themselves, they're dull. He can stand up, but unless it's for a bite of food (and he can only really hold down a bite or two), he'd rather not bother. He'll go outside the door to defecate, but only if you make him. He'd rather stay inside and go under the kitchen table.
Ten weeks ago, doggie and I ran up and down the ocean beach, wondering how we would get back to that place to live out our days. Doggie isn't going to make it. In fact, he's not going to make it through tomorrow. I'm going to help him see things out while he's still got just a shade of dignity left. I just made the phone call.
I need to pull myself out of this starstruck slippery swerve that's leading me to a place I don't want to go. If I can't, I won't make it back there either. The book is exciting. The hype is exciting. I can't tell you how it felt to sit in a publishing boardroom, listening to a roomful of people try to convince me that I should "let" them publish me. But now that's in the past. I need to get back to remembering all those important little details, like where this book came from in the first place. It didn't get started in a boardroom. It got started while I was lying on a huge piece of rock that was jutting out into the water, seaspray wetting my face. The connections that made all these editors so excited flashed through my mind while I lay there on that ancient boulder, shielding my eyes from the brilliant sun. My most ambitious goal of all for the book should be that I want to make a few others find their own rock and lie across it, drinking deep, finding the connection to the planet that is the only thing that makes this daily grind worth cherishing. Royalty rates and mass paperback editions should not be entering into it, unless they help me get closer to that goal.
Doggie's bowing out tomorrow. I'm bowing out later. His day is fixed, but mine's still a matter for speculation. It's coming, though. When it does, I hope it won't be the hype I'm thinking about, nor all of those emails from New York. It'll be that rock, that spray, and that sun that fills my mind. At least if I've got any sense it will be.
posted by Colin at 4:42 PM
1 Comments:
You've got sense, Colin- and seems to me a quiet, spiritual, powerful sense of direction. You haven't forgotten anything~haven't in the bright man-made rooms given into their song. Proof is in the fact that you come back here, and touch on the words that rose from you while on that rock, within those trees, knee deep in the sea.
I'll be thinking of you, your family and the pup tomorrow. You're a good guy and you're doing good things.
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