My friend Leslie sent this YouTube video. It took me a couple of days to get around to it. Watching it, I was blown away. More importantly, I was reminded, once again, why it’s so important to pursue the dream . . . Because you just never know! Click on the link.
I finished editing the final draft of my novel on a couple of weeks ago. Last week, just before I left for spring break, I mailed the manuscript to my friend and beloved mentor, David Haynes, for him to (hopefully) give it the final thumbs up before I start looking for an agent. My goal was to get the book in the mail so I could thoroughly enjoy spring break with the girls, and I admit, it was very pleasant not to have that anxious feeling for once. I didn’t miss the agitated voice constantly whispering, “I should be writing. I should be writing. I should be writing . . . “
But now, spring break is over. I’m back at home. David has only had the manuscript for a week. It’s ridiculous to expect that he’s read it. I know he’s at least started because he sent me an e-mail saying it had arrived and he was enjoying the read, but I know he’s busy. And as much as I’d love to think he’s at his desk reading RIGHT NOW, that he can’t put the book down, I know that’s crazy and unrealistic. It’s too much to ask. Too much to expect. I need to relax, be patient. He’ll get to it. At least these are the things I tell myself every hour when I check my e-mail and feel a little pinch of disappointment he hasn’t sent word.
But here’s my problem: I’ve spent the last ten-plus years of my life working on this book. Day in and day out, rain or shine, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. When I say the novel has become a part of me, I’m not kidding. Just like I don’t remember the days when there wasn’t Harry Potter, I can’t remember a time when I DIDN’T think about Wheatie and Ralph Angel and all the other characters who have become my second family. I feel like I’ve lost an arm . . . No, I feel like I’m LOOSING MY MIND as I wait for David’s response because all of a sudden, I don’t have a story to work on. Well, that’s not true. I actually have three stories I’m thinking about, but I’m back at the beginning. It’s horrible. It’s actually worse than staring at a blank computer screen at the beginning of a chapter because at least then, I could look over my shoulder and mark my progress. This feels like I’m floating out in space without being tethered to the capsule. It’s all black. I can’t tell if I’m upside down or right-side up.
See this picture of my office?
Okay, I admit, it’s still a bit junky, but this is the cleanest it’s been in MONTHS! During my full-court press to finish the novel and during the entire time it took to complete the edits, I couldn’t see a single square inch of the floor for all the paper and crusty coffee mugs and Fiber One Bar wrappers and piles of books. Do you know why it looks this neat now? BECAUSE I’M NOT WRITING!!!!!!!!! For the first time in ten years, I have time to pay bills and do the laundry and answer e-mail and IT’S KILLING ME!!!!!
Which is all to say, I’d better hear from David soon. Just kidding. What I need to do is start the next book. That’s the only thing that’s going to save me. That’s the only endeavor that’s going to make me feel like me again. I’ve been running a literary marathon for over a decade. Now that it’s over, this phase anyway, I can’t expect to wake up the next day and not run, right??????? I’ve been conditioned to run. That’s what I do. I can’t take this free-floating. I completely understand why actors desperately swing from one movie to the next. It’s the primal need to feel productive, to be fully engaged and maybe even a little over-extended, to feel like you’re alive and doing what you’ve been put on this earth to do. The only feeling that could be worse than what I’m feeling now would be long term writers block, the kind that goes on for years. I think I’d shoot myself.
So tomorrow, it’s time to get back to work. I’m packing up my computer and heading to my office. I’m going to shut the door and only come out for lunch. I’m not foolish enough to expect that I’ll start writing. I won’t put that kind of pressure on myself. Besides, I’ve been at this long enough now to know how it goes: I’ll go easy. Start slow. I’ll read some poetry and maybe a couple of short stories. That should quiet my mind enough for me to hear the new voice, the first word, maybe even the first sentence. An image will come to me and then one of the characters I’m thinking about will step forward, offer his or her hand, and I’ll be off to the races again. After that, waiting for David’s comments won’t feel like lying on a bed of nails. I’ll have someone else tugging on my sleeve.
I can’t wait to see where I go. I can’t wait to meet my new family.
I think I should come back as a musician in my next life–that’s how interesting I’m finding my piano lessons. I’m still a beginner. I’m taking baby steps. But I’m enjoying this experience more than I’ve enjoyed anything in a long time.
I took the girls to see my parents last week for Spring Break. When I told my mom I’d started taking piano lessons again, she nearly fell on the floor. All week, she begged me to play something for her. “Just one song. Anything. Please.” I suspect she was privately thinking she’d believe I was playing the piano when she heard something with her own ears. On the last morning, just before we left, I played “Pirate’s Song,” the jaunty little tune fit for a third grader. I may as well have played a Beethoven concerto the way my mom reacted. But as I write this, it occurs to me her reaction may have been inspired by something else: a sense of relief that as a parent she hadn’t failed, the thought that even though I bombed at that recital thirty years ago, she’d planted the seed. She’d done her job as a parent.
I understand the reaction. I want so much for my girls. I want them to love music and books the way I love music and books. I want them to understand why art is important. Not just understand, I want them to BELIEVE it the way I believe it–with my whole self. And so, just like my mom did thirty years ago, I find myself dragging them to museums and concerts when they’d rather watch Nickelodeon. I hear myself insisting they push to the front of the tour so they can hear everything the docent has to say when they’d rather hang back. Just last Sunday, I heard myself declaring that I was buying tickets for the Egypt exhibit at the De Young, and “they were going whether they liked it or not!”
The weekend before spring break, I dragged them to a classical music concert at Berkeley. The American String Quartet was performing pieces by Hayden and two other composers whose names escape me at the moment. We were the only African-American family in the concert hall. H and C were the only kids. No joke–the average age of the audience members was probably sixty-eight. At the end of the concert, the man seated next to C tapped her arm and said, “come back again, and bring your friends.”
C is still taking piano lessons too, and sometimes it’s a challenge to find a balance between being a hard-ass and being sympathetic to the other demands on her time. I told her when I sighed her up I was going to ride her pretty hard about practicing and quitting wasn’t an option. At first, she was at the keyboard all the time. But then the novelty wore off as she realized she wouldn’t be a virtuoso overnight. Now, most days, I have to remind her to practice and she usually has a dozen reasons why she can’t get to it. I didn’t ride her about practicing while we were visiting my parents, but when we got home from I insisted she put in some time. She grumbled and sighed and moped and finally dragged herself to the keyboard. But I think my hard-as-nails-approach paid off. Monday, after her lesson she turned to me and said, “that was fun. It makes a big difference when I’ve practiced.”
I resisted the urge to launch into one of my parenting speech. I just squeezed her hand. “Exactly.”
I don’t care if my kids grow up to be concert musicians. In fact, I seriously doubt that will happen. But if, thirty years from now, they can sit at a piano or pick up a violin or saxaphone and play something that brings them joy, I’ll have done my job. I won’t even bother denying it– I’ll breathe a sigh of relief and give then a standing ovation, exactly like my mother.