Fill-In-The-Blank

Buried deep in cover letters, doubts, and the concentrated strangeness of having time to work. I spent a large chunk of this morning doing research, which always leaves me cranky and limp—overwhelmed by information while sinking under the intangibility of it all. No words on paper, just the worn-out click of a mouse. This necessary homework along the path to publication bogs me down, is “hopelessly unromantic” as Anne Shirley would say. My brainwaves get tangled in grammar and protocol. Can I say this? Who do I contact in what order? Will these laborious search-engine hours pay off in some recognition, or do I need a big dose of Tyler Durden—“you are not a beautiful or unique snowflake,” just stick to your little sphere of homelife?

It all makes me need a thoroughly unique moment, like screaming into an abyss from the back of a Garden State tractor. A voluntary suspension of grammar. Homemade hot chocolate, but only if I don’t have to do the homemaking of it. A fill-in-the-blank poster, all blanks.

I’m up to six submissions for this year. Only one heard back from—a contest I didn’t expect to win anyway. Five crisp white hopes still out in the world and not a clue whether they will find dry land or fling themselves back at me like boomerangs. I’ve never done this before. (I blame my husband for all this optimism and bravery and trying of new things, and it still took him five years to convince me to do what I longed to do.) Either I’m an imposter or I’m reinvented, sharing my words and wobbling on stilts with my chin up… but it’s good. So good.