WAITING TO INHALE
My friend Susan is waiting to hear from an agent about a book project she submitted. So she's nuts. As she wrote me, "I am in the throwing-up-what-was-I-thinking stage.
Boy, haven't I been there. In fact, several years ago I wrote an essay about exactly this phase in the writer's life titled "Paranoia."
I am reprinting it here with Susan in mind. And to remind myself of how far off center the profession can pull us.
Here is the essay:
I was going to write about writers and equanimity, but I am so far removed from any sense of balance that this subject will have to wait for another day. What I'm feeling is paranoia. My manuscript's off to my agent.
I mailed it two weeks ago. The first days passed with the usual jumble of exhaustion, euphoria and relief that accompanies the completion of a book. I tidied my office and caught up on correspondence that had piled up during the final push when I was cranking eight or nine hours a day. I dumped the cat litter. I flossed my teeth.
Then one morning, as if my subconscious had secretly been marking days on the calendar, I woke and thought: It's been seven days.
One week. And I haven't heard anything. What does this mean?
Here is what I would tell a sister-writer in these circumstances: Enjoy the break. Have fun. Drink champagne. But a pair of shoes. Go out to lunch. Catch a movie. Drive into the city. Buy more shoes. Sleep. Camp out in the hammock and stare at the sky. Relax. Get a massage. More shoes. More champagne.
Here is what I tell myself: It's been a week. Why haven't I heard anything?
"Lighten up," I would tell a friend in these circumstances. Fortunately, my own friends have developed senses of self-preservation and keep advice like this to themselves.
Days pass. The silence from West 57th Street deafens me to reason. I still haven't heard. What does it MEAN?
It means nothing.
It mean everything.
It means my agent is on vacation. It means she probably hasn't even gotten around to reading it yet. It means she hates it; it means she's dropping me from her client list.
Now I'm not thinking champagne. I'm thinking Drano.
I get an e-mail from a friend in Wisconsin, a woman whose books have an apartment on the New York Times Best Seller list and who writes a syndicated column. A woman who has been on Oprah. Her editor just called to schedule a lunch. "I think he want to cancel the column," she writes. "And I am NOT being paranoid."
No. Of, Course not.
The only people who think an invitation to lunch means rejection are writers. And maybe actors.
Listen," I tell my friend. "If someone is planning on giving you the ax, he doesn't do it over lunch. Lunch means he wants something."
"Right," she says. "He wants to cancel the column."
Paranoia. From a Greek word meaning madness. And it is a kind of madness, this thinking.
I watch the mail. I skulk around waiting for the office phone to ring. It's been eleven days. No word from West 57th Street.
Food cravings start. I want potato chips. Cookies. Chocolate. Big time.
My friend e-mails again. She's had "The Lunch." The editor wants more columns.
She maintains she was not being paranoid earlier. Nine out of ten times, everything turns out fine, she says, but that tenth time colors everything.
What do they call it with rats? Intermittent re-enforcement?
Several years ago, another friend phoned while waiting for her agent to respond to a submission. "It's been two weeks," she fretted. "I think she hates it."
"Two weeks is nothing,' I said. "If two months pass and she hasn't responded, maybe you should worry."
My friend's anxiety couldn't be eased. Another week passed. Finally her agent called, apologizing for taking so long. "I've been on vacation," she explained," and then when I came back I was busy running my daughter's Brownie Troop bake sale."
My daughter's Brownie Troop bake sale.
This phase has become the shorthand we use to remind us of the insecure state of insane projecting we dive into when we're waiting.
I think we get into this state as a kind of superstitious ritual. Maybe we prepare for rejection as a way of warding it off. I don't know of one writer who, on shipping off a manuscript, primes herself for the best. We don't think, "Oh, she's going to love it." Or, "When he reads it he'll probably want to negotiate to get me more money and a two-book contract." No, we don't go there.
Another day passes with no word. My mental health deteriorates. I think of all the people who know I've finished the book and are waiting to hear its fate. I consider moving somewhere far away. Somewhere, say, like Cameroon,
I stare into paranoia's mad face. And gradually I realize it is not a face I am seeing but a mask. The frantic, obsessive facade that covers fear.
The uncertainty of not knowing does feel unsafe. So once again I must face the gargoyle of insecurity, of sitting in not knowing, of learning the lessons of faith. What I have been doing is projecting all my deepest fears and insecuritites onto my agent.
Who probably hasn't read it yet.
Who is probably on vacation.
Who is busy with a bake sale. Probably.
So there it is. Hang tough, Susan.