Eat the Damn Cake

I used to write books alongside a friend, growing up. We just hung out and wrote. All of her girl characters were incredibly pretty in exactly the way you’d expect. They all had enormous eyes and rosebud lips and little slips of noses. They all had cascades of brilliant hair, and slender, long necks. I got mad at her.

“Why are they all like that?” I asked.

“Because it’s fun to read about pretty people,” she said.

“But what if girls can’t identify with them?” I said.

“Girls want to be more like the girls in books. They want to look more like them, too,” she said. “You don’t want to read about someone who isn’t really pretty because you want to imagine being really pretty.”

I didn’t think I wasn’t really pretty. I thought I was unexpected. We were only fifteen when we had this discussion. Later on, I became less sure of my different-beauty. Sometimes, automatically, I identified with the girl who was described as unattractive. The beak-nosed woman or the girl the boys weren’t in love with. It’s back and forth now. Sometimes I am the unattractive one. Sometimes I’m the beauty. Because I am some swirling combination of these things, and lots of things in between, I think. And I’m still looking for clues about how I’m supposed to identify.

Recently, I was reading yet another book about a girl with a “perfect nose.” Every time a female character is described as having the “perfect nose,” I know exactly what it will look like: the opposite of mine. It will be delicate and small and fine. It will never be bulky and arched and bold. It will never dominate her face. Of course not. That would be ridiculous.

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I sent my book in.

An agent asked to see some of it. I sent her as much as I’ve written. 138 pages.  But I have the rest of the plot. Most of it, anyway. I have it scribbled in about ten notebooks and worked over on my chalkboard and in thirty word docs in a folder on my computer. I have so many versions. I have so many things crossed out, so many failed ideas, so much to clarify. Most of the time, when I look at it, I think entirely new things. I have entirely new criticisms. I wonder suddenly if all of the characters have the wrong hair color. If the story is actually stupid. I can’t remember how I thought of it. Sometimes I stare at the words blankly, unable to see even a page into my book’s future.

It took me over two months to send her something. Not because I didn’t have it. But because I was afraid.

I was so afraid, I was paralyzed.

Not of rejection, but of the after.

After she rejects it, I thought, will I be able to keep writing?

I have been rejected many, many times. I mean, obviously. I’m a writer, and I send stuff out. Often, I don’t even get a note, I just never hear back. Often, it’s a form letter. At first, I would lose a day to each one. But it’s been almost two years since I started sending stuff out, and now I glance at it and get back to work. Sometimes I even laugh, a hard, bitter, laugh, to myself. I laugh sardonically at the absurdity of it all and pour myself a cup of coffee and drink it black. I roll a cigarette and smoke it thoughtfully, squinting into the glare of the anonymous city.

(source)

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There are all these lists of college subjects you might have foolishly majored in that will eventually lead to your starvation in a gutter. The ten majors that will cause you to starve the fastest!

There are all these lists of things you can do wrong, by accident, just because you thought it sounded interesting, that will end up ruining your career prospects and your life and probably your chance at ever seeming sexy.

There is also a very short list with the three majors that will result in happiness. Or at least enough food to keep you alive.

That list never contains my major. But at the time, I really thought I was being practical. I was going to be a professor, after all. 

(Ha! I can’t remember anything! How was I going to be a professor? You need to know FACTS for that)

Actually, by the time I got to grad school, I was so focused that I only took one class that had nothing to do with what I was studying. And that was the class that changed my life. 

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I am a writer now, but when I was a little girl, I thought I would grow up to be a painter. After all, I painted nearly every day. And when I wasn’t painting, I was drawing. Mostly princesses. Sometimes their stepsisters, who always turned out not to be evil in the stories in my head. The princesses also always had brown hair. That was important.

Sometimes I drew cats, because I secretly wished that I was part cat, or at least would end up being able to communicate with cats psychically (at eight or so, I finally had to admit that I still couldn’t understand cat thoughts, but to this day, I have dreams with cats in them more than I think the ordinary person does, soo…just sayin’).

I started drawing as soon as I could hold a pastel, and I didn’t stop until I was maybe seventeen.

When I was fifteen, I put a bunch of my canvasses in an enormous plastic carry-case and went to New York City, to an art school fair at Pratt, where schools had set up booths and for the first few minutes, it seemed like I was the only person there not wearing black.

“You are really talented,” I was told by several schools. “But you’re too young. Why are you here?” 

I was there because I painted all the time.

(rejection makes me feel like this)

It’s been almost a year since I last played keyboard. My senior year of college, I played nearly every day. I had a beat up, sized down silver keyboard on a stand, and I wrote music constantly. Song after song about the parking lot that my dorm room looked over, and what it might symbolize about life. Song after song about the guy who acted like he liked me back and then seemed to change his mind. Occasionally I wrote about both things at the same time:

“All the cars in the parking lot are waiting, waiting, but they play it cool/ I know, I know exactly what I want/ but there are so many rules…”

See what I did there? It’s like I’m the cars! I’m so clever. So very clever.

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I have a history of being jealous. It’s not the sort of thing that’s cool to admit. Because jealousy is really petty and everyone knows it. Also, everyone knows it means you’re insecure. People who are secure do not feel jealous. They feel supportive and happy. Their neighbor wins the $389,000,000 lottery? Good for them! We’re planting a new garden!

That was based on my mom. She is the least jealous person ever, and she loves to garden.

(source)

Clearly, I am not very secure. I mean, clearly.

I’m working on it.

For a while, whenever I went to my writing group, I got jealous. We’d all show up, being fabulous and wearing interesting shoes, preening a little. And we’d report on our two weeks apart. Who was pitching where, getting accepted where, who had this amazing new opportunity, who had gotten this crazy gig. Quick, I thought frantically, think of something impressive you’ve done! I was deathly afraid that nothing would come to mind.

And sometimes I am so jealous I feel my smile get stuck on my face and I can hear my own voice, surprisingly squeaky, as though from a great distance, saying, “That’s great! That’s really great!” and in a second I think I might laugh like the laugh track on a bad sitcom. “Oh my god! I’m so happy for you! That’s really great! Oops! I tripped over my feet!” *laughter*

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After feeling awfully sorry for myself yesterday, and moping around for a bit, and then frantically pitching approximately three-thousand* magazines while frothing at the mouth, I took a moment to think.

I highly recommend moments like those. Thinking moments. Where you go, “But seriously, what the hell am I doing?”

(source)

I was freaking out. I am one of those people who tends to freak out. I tend to believe the worst. I tend to interpret things negatively. If someone gives me a weird look on the elevator, I am more likely to think, “Why does she hate me?!” than “Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I’m carrying fourteen bottles of diet orange soda?”

When something bad happens to me, I am likely to think, “Well, this just says it all. I know the truth now. I suck. That is the truth. Nothing good will ever happen to me. And I’d might as well accept it. Maybe I should cry a lot, dramatically, at my computer, while I’m accepting it. Yes. Definitely the way to proceed.”

And then I proceed that way.

But when I took a moment to think, after my bout of frantic pitches, it occurred to me that a lot of this probably comes down to how I think about success.

How do you think about success?

I think about it like this: GOLD MEDAL NOBEL PEACE PRIZE PULITZER A MILLION DOLLARS GIANT BOOK DEAL HOUSEHOLD NAME SUPERMODEL MOVIE STAR EVERYONE IN THE WORLD LOVES YOU MORE THAN THEY LOVE THEIR KIDS.

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I want to write something fantastic today, but honestly, I’m sitting here staring into the yawning mouth of my ancient printer, wondering about the meaning of life. In other words: I just got a rejection letter.

I get rejection letters all the time. I’m a writer. This one hurt in particular because the editor had written to me first, rather than the other way around. She requested a specific piece. She named an amount of money that was larger than any amount of money I’ve ever been offered for anything I’ve written. And she suggested that the process to publication would be smooth.

Nothing had been signed. Nothing was formally formalized, but she sounded so certain that I felt so certain that I did the thing I shouldn’t have done: I told my parents.

Look how well I’m doing! This big deal magazine came to ME!

We were in the kitchen, at their house. They were so excited for me. They said a lot of things about how things are finally coming together for me. How my hard work is paying off.

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