Is It Thanksgiving Yet?
In which I ponder the coming months
Don’t adjust your screen. It’s just me waking up way too early on a Friday, excited for the future.
I don’t know what it is about Story Club with George Saunders that inspires me so - truly kind and generous people talking about literature and life, like a good-natured thanksgiving get together. Except it’s twice a week!
My creative bursts have been off the charts lately. It may be success in finding an editing client and the suggestions of a promise of a life where that could lead. It may be the positive work on my writing and budding friendships from a writing group I’m in (shout out to EfW).
This newsletter is partly supposed to document my journey towards traditional publication.
I received another rejection this past weekend, this time from an agent who said he was looking for experimental works that are hard to categorize (Ooo! Ooo! pick me! pick me!!). I always send queries off with such hope. I mean, maybe I should send it off and say, “I guess it’ll be someone new to not want this work.”
I have to remind myself that I’m in the game. I’ve written a book, given it much thought and care and written and revised and revised and revised and revised And revised. It’s a numbers game, unless it’s not and the work is not good. When I go back and look at it, I see its value - not just that it’s the story of part of my life, but that it’s shaped as art and owes much to one of the greatest poems ever.
Today, I woke up with a movie idea, spawned from thoughts of the movie But I’m a Cheerleader. I won’t give out the idea just yet, but I think it could be good!
When I wake up and reach for my phone to type out a creative idea in notepad, I know something’s working behind the scenes. Maybe it’s the Lion’s Mane mushroom powder. Maybe it’s the promise of new beginnings with this upcoming move across country to Seattle. I’m sitting in a mostly empty apartment with almost everything all boxed up, two weeks ahead of schedule. I’m beyond excited. I looked into a sailing club that’s practically walking distance from where I’ll be living. I looked into the cost of kayaks. I am going to enjoy this experience!
But I need to fund it.
I mean, if you can get more people to subscribe to My Own Private Waste Land, that would be great. But it’s FREE so that’s not going to fund my retirement. If you’re reading this, you’re already subscribed.
I’ve started writing on Medium again (look up https://leehornbrook.medium.com/). They’ve integrated an official new “tipping” feature, so maybe I’ll get a couple cups of coffee now and again.
Okay, so maybe you can share this newsletter with others to help me grow my audience so I can have a platform that will increase my chances of selling my book or convincing an agent or editor to take a chance on my damned good book that someone should buy to fund my retirement.
I woke up on the woo woo, spiritual side of the bed this morning, thankful for this life I’m leading right now. I had a bad dream, woke up and my Dachshund was laying next to me, on his back as he does like he’s a human. I reached for him to pet him and to make sure I wasn’t rolling over on him - he’s little, only 16 lbs - and to make sure what I was feeling was his head not his butt. And I snuggled him a little and then wrote down my movie idea that wasn’t part of the dream but that just came to me whole.
And I thought about Story Club, and read some of the posts and added some more to the conversations. Maybe nothing comes of it, but I’m excited to move to an area where there’s a possibility of meeting new people and having coffees and conversations with others who have a passion for literature and story-telling. I miss teaching.
Don’t misunderstand. I miss the social aspect of teaching. Not the grading. I think the grading deadened my creative spirit and I’m still waking up from that. I miss working with students and having fun (yet serious) conversations with friends and colleagues about the things that matter to us - reading and literature and learning - and kindness. And baseball and sailing.
My life has been all about kindness in a way, yet I’ve run into some truly horrible people. I’ve tried to look at the world through their points of view - and it just doesn’t fit with who I am and how I see the world. Why did my path go through those people? How did they change? Or did they - was it a trick of the light that I missed? Or did I change, or not change?
I think that’s what writing memoir has done the most for me - allowed me to explore perspectives so thoroughly that it reinforces the truths of what I’ve lived and the choices I’ve made in my life.
I don’t like questions like, what would you differently if you had it to do all over again? But I honestly think my answer would be - nothing. I’d do it the same - because it led to where I am now.
And where I am now is a pretty darned good place to be.
Thank you for indulging this introspective posting today. I have a good plan for the upcoming weeks of moving. I’m going to write to you from the past, prewrite my posts before I move. I’ll miss two postings during our drive, the 26th and the 29th, and I’ll schedule those posts ahead of time with what I think might be going on with the drive. But we will be staying somewhere those nights, so I’ll add to my posts to update you about the reality of our trip.
If all goes according to plan, by September 2nd, to kick off Labor Day weekend, I’ll be writing to you from our new home in Seattle. I can’t wait.
Until then, be well and thanks for reading. As for me, I’ll . . .
Just keep writing!
(you know, nobody has said anything to me, but I *know* that the sign off on my posts is corny. I’ll explain it at some point. It has a value for me. And I will share that with y’all in an upcoming post.)
Oh yeah, leave your comments below. What’s been going on in your lives? I feel separated from my books since they’re all in boxes.
Post Script Side Bar: In scheduling this post for publishing, I remembered a couple of things. This week, I watched the new West Side Story. It’s incredible. The actors actually sing their parts rather than have voice overs as in the original. It’s so bad that our world is upside down and a movie of that caliber didn’t do well at the box office. It deserves far more acclaim than it received. There was some distraction regarding the lead actor and a sexual assault issue, too. It’s difficult to know the truths of those things from such a distance. Some reviewers claimed that was one of the reason for the poor showing. Others blamed a pandemic variant surge. Whatever the reason - it’s available to stream now. If you liked the original, go watch this version - it’s, dare I say it, better!
Also, August 13th (tomorrow) was my nephew Seth’s birthday. He was born the year I started college, the year the Dodgers won the World Series, 1981. He’d be 41 if he had lived. This year, on October 15, will be the 10th anniversary of his death, one of the tragic suicides in our family. August 13 was also my grandfather’s birthday (my father’s father). At one point, we had a picture taken of all 4 generations of Hornbook men taken - my grandfather, father, brother, and nephew. (I’m not sure if I was in that picture or not). My grandfather lived into his 80s.
