Here's the Thing

after Anne Lamott

This morning I rose at 6:00, grabbed a cup of coffee, settled on the loveseat with my laptop, and began. I looked up at noon in what I can only describe as shock. Six hours had flown by. Six magical hours of witnessing life through the eyes of the pre-teen characters in the novel I’ve been working on since January — my new year’s project. I am at the point, close to the end I think, where I’m now following the adventures of the characters in my dreams.

And here’s the thing (as Anne Lamott implores us not to say): this story that I love, these characters that I love, is almost guaranteed to generate a note from an agent or an editor that begins, “Thank you for sending us your manuscript. Although we enjoyed the writing… Best of luck placing it elsewhere.”

But I keep doing it, sending my words out into the world, hoping, hoping.

Isn’t that what life is anyway? The endless following of a dream? Trying it again and again, hope renewed, believing that this time will be the right time.

Last night I took a painting class. It was fun. The host gave us wine to sip as we mixed colors and tried to make the vision that we saw inside our heads match the shapes that were filling the canvas. I couldn’t help looking at the canvasses of others, wishing I had their skill, wishing that I’d chosen a smaller brush, a deeper blue.

There sat Elke, who told me a few minutes before that her cancer was back, that she didn’t have long. “I almost didn’t come,” she told me, “I couldn’t get out of bed, but here I am.” And there she was, painting sea and sky and a canvas filled with cherry blossoms and the promise of spring. A palette of hope as the hours fly by.