Writing Life

I haven’t written anything on my blog lately, because I’ve been focusing on a manuscript for which I hope to find a publisher.  I considered the project finished, but then some improvements and other ideas came to mind. That’s a nice thing about the creative process; new ideas develop with patience and time. The manuscript is about ready again, either to show to the publisher with whom I already have a submitted proposal, or for other publishers.

Writing even a short book is a complicated thing. Heck, writing a poem is complicated!  You have details to keep track of, the sound of words to rehearse  A change in a later chapter, or in a stanza or paragraph, may throw off something else. But that’s part of the joy, managing such details. Annie Dillard called book writing “life at its most free,” although some of my motorcycle-riding friends would vouch for that passion instead.

Not including this manuscript, I’ve written sixteen books, ten of which were for-hire works, all but one for Abingdon Press. All ten required a deadline, and although that’s never a problem for me, it does obviate the ability to mull over your work and to polish it as you might like if you had more time. You have to have a trusting relationship with your editor.  One work was a longer church-related book which was the result of a successful proposal pitch, but the publisher gave me eleven months to complete the project.  So that one turned out to have a deadline, too, although a slightly longer time than some assignments.

Having plenty of time to write, though, doesn’t always help. My first book, a history of my hometown published by an academic press, was spread discontinuously over fifteen years. In hindsight, that was too long a time and the manuscript lost some “naturalness” and consistency.  

Finding a publisher can be a difficult process, not always related to the quality of your work. If you have feedback from an editor, you could adapt it, but editors don’t have time to comment on every manuscript. I was fortunate that that first book found a home with the very first publisher I approached. My second book, which had been my doctoral dissertation, found a publisher after three years. But I remember submitting it to three or four other places. One publisher, Westminster John Knox, declined it, but then an editor contacted me again to consider it again, and declined it again.  Sheesh.

Another distressing thing, that I’ve begun to notice lately, is that editors don’t write back at all. Several months ago I submitted five poems to a small magazine and I have a feeling they’ve been declined, but I’ve no idea.

You do have to have thick skin to submit your work for publication. I learned that long ago.  It’s no shame to be rejected; the renowned poem William Stafford admitted that his poems are declined four times out of five submissions. Some works are submitted dozens, hundreds of times. But even knowing that, you do feel discouraged. “Submission”----that’s a decent word for this process, because you’re putting yourself in a vulnerable position by seeking approval for your work. But there’s nothing “submissive” about the process; you have to be strong and never give up.

I love Annie Dillard’s book The Writing Life, with all its wonderful metaphors and images of writing. I wonder if she meant the book as a “manual,” though, but rather an essay on the mysterious Presence that fills the universe, this time glimpsed through the hard, give-it-your-all work of writing, rather than the sights and sounds of Tinker Creek or the wonders of growing up.

I feel that Presence in particular when I’ve lost myself in the writing process----when two or three hours have passed without my awareness of the clock. It’s not a vision of God, but it’s definitely a lose of a sense of self, cares, and worries not unlike very deep prayer. Sometimes it is literally a prayer, a "sigh too deep for words" because you're devoting all the words you have for this kind of service.