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Crazy and Sure
By Kelly Pollard
"Are you crazy?"
"Are you sure about this?"
I get those questions all the time. I even ask myself those questions during
those moments of revitalized self-doubt. I question and shoot back and question
again: Is it possible to be crazy and sure about something simultaneously? Ask
any friend or family member of mine and they will all concur I am indeed crazy.
I have also been sure that I want to write since scribbling my first short story
in the fifth grade, cleverly titled "Lost in the Fog, Parts One and Two." I am crazy
to believe I will make it as a writer, but even more crazy, because I am so sure
of my talents for creating significance out of emptiness.
The crazies and sures took flight during my first or second year of college when
well-meaning relatives asked about my major (American Studies) and after just a
hint of a raised eyebrow, asked me just what I intended to do with that obscure
course of study.
"Well," I would say with a slight pink tinge to my cheeks. "I want to be a
writer."
"What kind of writer?"
"Oh, I don't know. A novelist or maybe write children's stories," I would shoot
back.
The conversations inevitably ended on the note of "Well, there is always
teaching!" in a not-so-reassuring voice.
Not that there is anything wrong with teaching. I could even see myself as a
teacher. I like kids. I have even worked with kids. That was my first and only
job I held after I earned that highly contested degree. But my dream was always
to write. Crazy. Surely.
The crazies and sures picked up once again when I announced I was engaged and
was planning my wedding a month after college graduation. What about backpacking
across Europe with your friends? Or hitting the city clubs because you are
finally of legal drinking age? Again. I could see myself doing that. In fact, I
did do some of that. A lot. But my dream was to start my life as soon as
possible with the man I loved. Crazy. Surely.
Then out came two little boys and I was suddenly a stay-at-home mom with
absolutely no publishing credits to my slim resume. And I finally peeled myself
out of a sleep-deprived haze and realized that although my dream of a loving
family was alive and well, it had crowded out that equally burning passion. My
dreams always seem to be dueling and at odds. So I jumped back in with no life
jacket when my boys were six months and one year old. Very surely crazy.
I had visions of living the writer's life. The visions didn't include toddlers
slipping their grubby, chubby fingers between mine as they were racing across
the keyboard to catch a fleeting thought. The visions never included tapping as
lightly and quietly as possible while they napped the afternoon away. My visions
were more of taking on the exotic, rogue writer's role, a lá Jack Kerouac,
scribbling stories and poems in worn notebooks while bumping over potholes on
remote highways in the Southwest or Midwest or Northeast.
The vision also didn't consider that writing isn't all literary words and
passing musings. If you want to make a living at it, you have to learn the
"business" of writing. So a few months into my new/old passion, I was feeling
very accomplished with several submissions swirling in the abyss of the
publishing world. I was having some success with online publications that
couldn't afford to pay. Ideas swam in my brain and out my ear faster than I
could capture them. Then the rejection form letters started populating my mail
and e-mail inboxes. If that wasn't bad enough, they tended to show up in a
relatively short period of time. Like five in the same week. There were two in
the following week. I cried into my son's strained peas. I stomped along with my
other son's overblown tantrums. And I quit. This is CRAZY! I'm just not SURE I
can be a writer! How much free writing am I willing to give away before I
exclaim, "ENOUGH!"
Writing is one of those passions that require nerves of steel and brains as
sharp as the words are quick. It can be thankless, isolating, all consuming, and
at times degrading. Every possible assignment, every query is in itself a new
job interview. Instead of donning the pressed business suit and the determined
power walk through that office door, you are judged solely by what you have
dictated on paper. The writer's fire must be fed a constant stream of
inspiration and motivation because it is always in danger of being doused by one
too many rejections, one more demand on your time, or by not getting the support
you need from loved ones. Just when that flame is a meager flicker in my soul, a
spark finds its way into my heart. An acceptance letter from a market I've been
dying to see my byline in. Or it could be kind words from a reader I have
touched. Before jumping into the business of writing, I always viewed this art
as a silent dialogue with a ready audience who needs to relate, who desires to
be moved to laughter and tears. This is easy to forget as you target certain
ideas to certain markets. I must always revisit the fire within. I do this even
if it means that I must start with the smaller publications before climbing up
to the glory and fame of glossies and hardcover books. I will do this even if it
means starting with nonfiction articles, though the elusive first novel is
somewhere on the horizon of my thirties. In time, in time.
Being crazy and sure is a study of irony. It is a feeling that is constantly
questioning and at odds with itself. It is crazy to feel that your sole income
can be generated by creative forces within you that are often hard to control or
even summon. How can you really truly be sure about that?
A few weeks have passed since the rejection storm. The boys are both napping by
some freakish force of nature. I am alone in a quiet house with a pleading
computer. Touch me. Tell me. There are more queries to be written. There are
more characters calling out to me. There are thousands of markets left
untouched. The rejections are small hurdles for me to topple over. They are the
little stepping stones used to make a path across the vast publishing pond. The
boys are my ultimate distraction. The boys are my ultimate inspiration. Here I
am at the keyboard, all crazy and sure of myself once again.
Well, almost sure.
Kelly Pollard is an at-home mother and freelance writer. She squeezes big
ideas into very small amounts of time. She is included in the anthology
Stories of Strength and writes the "At Home Havoc" column at
http://www.mommiesmagazine.net.
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