Returning after a pause (and paws)

Well. It's been 2 months, exactly, since I posted to this blog. It's good to return. There's something about writing for myself but beyond just myself that brings things out in a special kind of way.

The absence was due to 2 things: one, the "Blogger" technology changed, and, ah, I could not figure out how to sign in and be recognized. (Is that a metaphor for something deeper?) And then, as often happens--including when one is writing a book--life intervened. My beloved cat, Duerme, was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor, which seemed initally mangeable but then spread too quickly. Within 5 weeks after the discovery, my husband Ralph and I sadly had him put to sleep, because his quality of life was so very uncomfortable for him, and fragile.

This is a topic in itself, Duerme's life and healing journey, and passing. So much feeling was and still is attached to a 12-pound black, furry being. I miss his warm belly against my chest as he purred as if I were everything he had ever hoped for in life (for a brief time, until he was ready to jump down and eat or sleep or go outside). Ralph has written a beautiful poem about Duerme, the longest he has ever written. Perhaps I'll get his permission to put it up, here.

So here I am, back to writing talk, book development talk, deeper being talk or non-talk. It's 6 p.m. and my energy is highest in the morning, so perhaps this is just a hello--if you read these and even miss them when they're not there--and to say that my journey to bring my own treasures into the world, through my book proposal, is still in progress. (I use that phrasing because the description following "Writing from the Deeper Self," in my work, is "Bringing Your Treasures into the World...")

Perhaps I will just give a quick status report:

* Book proposal: Still at New World Library for consideration. I was told they would be looking at it at the end of January. If I don't hear back by this Thursday, February 15th, I will be confident and courageous, and contact them.

* Book: It will be written, one way or another.

* Agents: I had been introduced to an agent by my book-proposal writing-class teacher. She was lovely, and encouraging, certainly. Though she said the book was not for her, she said she expected to see it on the bookshelves at some point. And pointed me to another agent.

I looked up the second one, and it was a very successful NY agency, with best-sellers to its credit. This agent, who wrote (by email) in very clipped, succinct sentences, asked to see not the book proposal but the first 3 chapters. I have come to realize that I am a person who will marshall all my energies to bring forth what is needed, if just one person says, "I'm interested, I want to see it." I don't need 100 people to say it; one will do. I'm sure that harkens back to the family-of-origin stuff, where everyone was so absorbed in their own unhappiness that there was no room to say, "Oh, look who you are, look what you did, I want to see more of you." So this is a place for me to work on within myself, to be able to sense what's there and reach in and affirm it, to say, "Oh, there you are, I see you, and I want to see more of you!"

I had 2 of the first 3 chapters ready to go. But the third needed work. And so, inspired by the possibility of a big-name agent saying yes to my book, I spent about a solid week reworking the chapter. It was very emotional, I must say. At one point, Ralph came into the room where I was writing, and since I was so immersed in the story as to "be" only eleven years old, I had trouble shifting gears and responding to his innocent request for something (postage, who knows?) in an adult way. Such is the pitfall of writing from inside the experience. Usually, I provide myself with a way to come back out into current reality. This time, perhaps the deadline of having the chapter ready to send to the agent caused me to lose my usual consciousness of being grounded when you step back into the past, so that what you find there becomes a gift, not a revisiting of old ways, alone.

I mailed the 3 chapters to the second agent. Within a week, I got an equally clipped, succinct email back. A rejection. She didn't care for my writing style.

Ah. Years ago, this would have been crushing! But somehow, the inner work made a difference. I sat with the bodily feeling, upon reading that dismissive email. It felt like dread in the belly, a quick rise of nausea. And then, perhaps because I had made room for it, it was gone. And it was gone. I did not--amazingly--obsess about the rejection. I just took it in stride (who is this person?) and went on to do other things. Like write a proposal to attend a writer's retreat center in Pt. Reyes in the spring or summer, on the assumption that I'd have reason to be writing The Blessings Ledger.

(My spiritual teacher, Hazrat Inayat Khan, writes often about confidence. How persistence and confidence ensure success. I work with this as I am able.)

There was a point, between sending in the 3 chapters and waiting to hear from the agent as well as from New World Library, where I felt in limbo. Just waiting. Unable to put full-steam aheadness into my next step, because if the book is accepted, that is one trajectory; if it is not, then I need to put more attention into other forms of income and work.

But it was a good moment when I was able to realize that no matter how deep my desire to be published by this very good, visionary publisher, I still had to believe in my book; and beyond that, I had to know that my worth as a human being did not depend on being published, not even by myself.

That was not the quickest of learnings. My parents were both writers, and my husband is a writer, and writers want to be read. It is not only an ego thing; it is a soul-yearning to be received, when the deepest part of you has infused your work.

But why I am a book developer, I think, in those times when I ask myself why I don't do something easier, and more directly happy-making (like scoop ice cream), is that our lives really are books, with plotlines, chapters, recurring themes, and even great illuminations that change the course of the book, so that the ending is greater than the beginning. I was born into a literary life, but my temperament, I have come to realize, is that of a healer. So I believe that books can heal us, and that writing a book can heal the writer first of all. And that's why, despite ups and downs and the "life that happens," I believe in the Writing from the Deeper Self process, and what it asks of us, and the immense rewards it gives us. And whether someone outside us recognizes what we have done or not (and we want it to be "yes"), what really matters is that we have the experience, ourselves, of having been brought from a place of beginning to a place of completion, and to a new beginning--a new chapter, or perhaps a new book--again.

May your life flow like a wonderful read, and may you be blessed in all ways.