Putting a Spin on It

By the standards of any normal, sane person, today was not a particularly good day. By the standards I choose to adopt, however, it was a marvelous day. It was a day of emotional release (heated arguments, in other words) and unintentional irony.

After getting a phone call from a weeping woman who was not my client, but was the buyer for a property I represented and sold to her and her husband, I then had a horribly emotional fight with the seller -- who was my client -- and ended up weeping myself. I then spent another very unproductive three hours at the office, too emotionally drained to think clearly, but too physically exhausted to even think about making the trek home. I had just gotten myself together and was about to leave when the telephone rang -- again.

This time it was a girlfriend calling to ask me to help her work on her mother's obituary -- her mother died Wednesday, alone in a hospital, while her daughter (my girlfriend) and I were having lunch. I've been miserably upset about her mother's death, and finally let myself feel the pain today -- while screeching at my client, no less. I told my friend I couldn't work on the obit with her. I was too tired, I said and meant it. So I came home, in a daze, walked in the door and got some mail. Among them was a rejection letter from the Chelius agency. Oddly enough, the only thing I thought of was, "Where's my nail?" To hang up the letter, I mean.

So now, I'm propped up in bed with my trusty but overworked Apple laptop, trying to get a grip on my feelings. I feel heartsick. Not over the rejection letter, but over the denouement of the relationship with my seller. I loved that man. Really loved him. No, he wasn't my lover or anything like that. But I thought of him in truly heroic terms. I guess I still do, but more in the Shakespearean sense of the word.

If I remember my high school English correctly, Shakespeare's characters were often wonderful people whose major flaw, often a fatal one, was an extreme overdevelopment of one particular virtue. My seller's "extreme" virtue seems to be loyalty. He'll defend his friends -- or those he considers as such -- to the bitter end. And I do mean bitter. It seems to be more important to him to hold on to his illusions about them and bear the consequences, than surrender his illusions, learn the truth and move on.

But I don't want to get sucked into talking or writing about that, anymore. I just wanted to admit ... that I'm heartsick.

I once read, with great envy, that Stephen King had a collection of more than 400 rejection letters. I had a collection in Munich. But I abandoned them once I got published. Now, I could start them all over again, I suppose.

But do I want to?

I felt an odd sense of relief at opening that letter. Being published is important to me -- but not all that important. I feel as though I'm due some kind of nudge from the universe -- sort of a sign, if you will. Maybe, this is not the direction in which I'm meant to go. I mean, I really do love writing. It's an end in and of itself. It's only when I'm among published writers that I remember the other part of it -- the celebrity, the money, the awards, the busyness (tours, signings, interviews, etc.). It's only then I think, "Why that's what I should be aiming for, isn't it? It certainly looks nice -- from here."

But I'm tired now, and don't care. I wanted an agent in New York, not someone on the other side of the country. I wanted an agent who will keep me with an editor. Now, I have no agent at all, and it doesn't bother me.

I'm relieved. I can write now, in peace, for myself, the way I wanted to. It's back to me, myself and I again. And that's not a bad way to be.