Today, my 57th birthday, is not a bad time to reflect on the story so far.

I’ve been reading publishing industry blogs lately. The path to these blogs began a month or so ago with a search for info about the business. I wanted to know how long it took, from acceptance of final to ship to store, to publish a book. Way longer than I thought possible, the answer helpfully provided THE INTERN’s marvelous blog. THE INTERN led me to the Rejectionist, also a rich blog with much to read of the highest quality and interest. I feel both empathy and profound interest for both of these bloggers. I wish the Rejectionist, who feels so much sadness at the endless supply of human depravity and injustice, peace. I wish THE INTERN continued success, and look forward to her forthcoming novel.

These two blogs led to two more: the Query Shark (Janet Reid), who also has a blog as herself, the agent, and to the blog of Miss Snark, another agent who bites. These two pistol packing Mamas sound in my head like the Editrix, Anne Cherry. Anne got an email from me, about which I am now properly sorry, in which I tried to get her to read my stupid, half-baked first book. I had just finished a shitty first draft and was all excited. Now, after getting a better handle on how the pub world is supposed to work (enough to know I know next to nothing, and every misstep is one step closer to the career ending grave where the rejects pile up to cover ones frosted corpse), I can see that my faux pas was truly faux. The fact that the voices are so similar suggests that there is a pub world zone, likely in the water of New York City, and it is uniform, possessing a unified set of rules and codes to live and work by. It is a discoverable set of dictums and attitudes, very useful if one has a clean slate and a well written, polished, commercially viable book to sell, but it is one that is merciless, after the fact, about transgressions.

I’m not talking about writing transgressions. Certainly, if your writing skills (from spelling and grammar to plot and atmosphere) are wanting, you are not a contender and never will be. If you are a brilliant, top one percentile writer, you can still shoot yourself in the foot so that you haven’t the ghost of a chance. There are many subtleties which pertain to comportment and protocol, even at parties. Among the dictums is the remarkable one about not talking about your unpublished work in social situations. It makes so much sense! It’s rude! It would be self-serving if it served any purpose, but it can’t. You’re chatting up a book that no one can read. You’re calling attention to yourself in a boorish, clowning way. It is winning you enemies, and making enemies of your friends and colleagues by the word. So just don’t. Stop that right now.

Another: Having a dead blog is useless. Blogging anything snarky or less than enthusiastic about another writer is ‘damaging to ones public face,’ if one is blogging out in public, as I have been. With the exception of Janet Reid, the publishing professionals I mention above are blogging anonymously. They are doing so to offer tips to the writing toilers, and they are doing it altruistically, for the love of good writing and as ‘writers care and support.’ I am blogging because I like the sound of my own voice. My blog is dead because I’ve disabled comments and I’m violating the dictums of not just the pub world, but also the social order.

I’d extend the above concept regarding blogging to other social media, particularly Facebook. Getting on Facebook and talking about unpublished work (as I have done), and stalking agents I happen to know (as I have done) is suicidal. So I’m likely dead before I had a chance to perfect the art of the query. What’s to be done? I’m dead. It’s my birthday, and I know I’m dead. Can I rise from the dead with some sort of atonement? I must be born again if that’s to happen. Perhaps my saving grace is that I’m almost completely an unknown. I will ponder the ways to stuff the bad genie back into the bottle and stopper it, but dead is dead. I need to be born. Again.