One
way and another, I’ve written a fair number of things: poems, essays, stories
(some of them complete), and more than enough chapters for a series of novels,
if only most of them weren’t first chapters. I have a muse, but she grew
discouraged, put her wings in storage and took a teaching job somewhere in the Midwest. We talk, sometimes.
Perhaps
8 or 10 people see what I write -- some of it -- since every editor on earth
can find it in his heart to refuse what I submit. For a while, when I was
sending lots of things off, the pace of rejection grew so furious that I began
receiving rejections for things I hadn’t even written yet. This disturbed the
time/space continuum, which banged on the ceiling with a broom, so we slowed
down. I once earned money as a caricature of a writer, an appeals lawyer,
writing (with fair competence), prose which turned to dust once a case was over.
Say
you’re a fictional character and you’ve sat down and made a cold assessment of
yourself. Honesty compels you to admit that you have more melancholy charm and
wit than Prince Andrei, a more seductive air than Emma Bovary, and that Sancho
Panza and Chita, working together, wouldn’t make half so delightful a sidekick. In
your mind, you can read the reviews, perhaps panning the book for the most
part, but forced to pause when it comes to you: “But Z! What a triumph! This
character leaps off the page, pummels you about the head and shoulders, drinks
your whiskey, kisses your wife and runs off with your wallet! Not to be missed!” Why would you
come to me, instead of someone whose stuff makes it into print?
This
is, more or less, what I’ve been trying to say to Melanie Beck, who insists I
write about her, despite my being ill-equipped and reluctant.
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