What does this moment feel like? It’s 1pm on a very sunny December day. I am sitting in a café called Java Joe’s in Santa Fe. Outside the plate glass windows, sheets of snow continue to occupy space in the northern shade of four ponderosa pines on a busy traffic corner. Inside the café the air is too warm. I scribble into a wire-bound notebook. On my table: a blue plate, spinach feta quiche crumbs, a crumpled white paper napkin.
This day is like any other day. The sound of dishes sinking down into deep water, refrigerator doors closing, the hiss of a cappuccino machine’s steam spigot, the soft tinkling of roasted coffee beans being poured from one container to another like a seashell waterfall. These sounds aren’t more distinct, more important than yesterday. But this day is unlike any other. This day I spoke the words, “my book agent.”
I just dropped off my manuscript copies of DIZZY SUSHI at the doorstep of a literary agent I met Friday. We shook hands. She emailed me a list of six editors at publishing houses. I looked over an agency contract for the first time. Tomorrow, DIZZY will be in the mail and in 6-8 weeks the first news will arrive. Acceptance? Rewrites? Rejections? An offer?
We don’t know if DIZZY will sell, (another new word in this context, “we”), but the idea is to get my name in front of editors so if DIZZY doesn’t win them over, we have at least started a dialogue when the next project comes to them.
I have said these words before—agent, editors, publishing houses—but now they stick. They’re real, actualized. Now there is a connection between them and me.
Remember records? LPs? A needle with a diamond tip carefully placed on the outer circumference of a rotating disc. It catches the first thread and a song begins. Before today the motion was there, the needle tip sharp, but the two weren’t meeting. Today, the outer edge of the publishing world and my creative intention have met and the beginning notes of music reverberate. A fitting end to a year-long blog about getting published, no?
My first post in January invited you to walk with me on this path and I am happy we have gotten here together. Your encouragement, interest, notes, and support have been an important piece of the whole. In you I have created an audience. I think of you when I write. And that has been one of the most important things I have discovered this year.
Are you ready for chapter two? We have climbed to the top of the canyon and stand on its lip looking out in all directions. Can you see the shape the river has cut into the rock? How it flows away to the south? I don’t know the path from here, but now we have a guide. Be assured: this is just the first step in possibly an even longer process. I, for one, am happy to have the company.
Yesterday as I began checking the pages of my ms, my hands had forgotten how to do it. It was almost 12 months ago that I last made so many copies of DIZZY. 332 pages were stacked in front of me, I had a rubber tip on the middle finger of my right hand and my left hand settled on top of the stack and I forgot the motions.Then, as I leaned into the paper, my left hand curled over the top edges and caught them as they flipped by while I confirmed no page was missing. Like being handed a newborn baby, your arms remember the pose.
