Back and Back and Back to the Notebook

A lot of my energy lately has been going into movies, so I don't have much writing news. Except this: for the last ten months, my book has been in the to-read pile of an agent, and last week she rejected it. It was a good kind of rejection, a kind that was pretty easy to get over, but it was still kind of deflating after waiting all that time.

And now I have absolutely no excuse not to revise the book. Which is actually more of a spirit-collapser than the rejection itself. Finding another agent to submit to is relatively easy; rewriting the whole climax and all the stuff that threads into it seems much harder.

At this exact moment I'm doing the dance of the damned: I wrote a couple of pages this morning on a story that's been kicking to get out of my head for months now. You'd think that starting would make it easier to keep going, but instead I'm casting around madly for something else to do. I'm caught up reasonably well on schoolwork and the apartment is clean enough and there's no money-work to be done and no e-mails to answer, so, the writing, it's what there is to do. And somehow I barfed up the first few pages before getting terrified and choosing to pace around and stare at Facebook and glance at my notebook from a few feet away rather than riding the wave.

No, it isn't. Coal mining is harder. I'm going back to the notebook.

...after I eat some lunch. And pick the right music. And maybe just vacuum a little bit.