When the time is right

No matter how much you want something now, the time must be right.

I’ve been reading Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story (2001). Gornick is known to be a strong, polemic writer commenting on the world around her. In this book, she unpacks what it means to write by looking at a variety of genres. Her closing chapter on memoir is particularly engaging—I found myself caught up in the memoirs she explored; moved and in the moment.

At the close of her book she comments:

When a book of merit is trashed upon publication, or one of passing value praised to the skies, it is not that the book, in either case, is being read by the wrong or right people, it is that the wrong or right moment is being intersected with.

Gornick, 2001, p. 164, emphasis mine

The wrong or right moment; I hear this idea echoing across my thinking. Or perhaps it is more like a pyroclastic flow, brutally clearing all that was, making way for new growth, new life.

To be a writer is more than writing. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Tell anyone you are a writer and they immediately ask ‘have you been published?’ as if this is some sort of validation for the act of writing itself. Yes, but no.

To be published is much more than the quality of the writing submitted. It is the mood of the editor and the feel they want for the work they produce. It is the cultural climate—too edgy or not edgy enough. It is your own courage.

For the last six months, I have sent very little out for consideration. Rejection emails fill the inbox, causing—what I am sure will be labeled as some sort of disorder soon—a strong predilection for not checking that inbox at all.

I was a child of the landline telephone. Privacy was only as far as the end of the telephone cord. In my case, the bathroom. Many an angst-ridden teenage conversation was held sitting on cold tiles in the dark. I doubt it afforded me the privacy I imagined. Even so, I developed a strong dislike for the telephone.

I would avoid answering it and was glad when the answering machine became a thing. Now, years later with no landline, I enjoy the silence. I like that there isn’t the insistent ringing of a telephone left unattended. And I enjoy caller ID and the buzz of my mobile. My friends, like me, prefer to text.

This means that the unwanted request/demand that was the telephone has now moved to email. Too many difficult emails and it becomes all too easy to ignore them. But email is how we do things these days and so rejection emails must be faced.

And our skin must grow thicker.

Gornick reminds me that the publishing world is so much more than me and my skill, voice, or font choice. It is about timing.

The time simply isn’t right for my collection Finding My Mother’s Daughter to be released to the world. A friend recently reminded me of how emotionally devastating the collection is and how brutal the loss is within its pages; this is a lot for a publisher to take on. They must be feeling brave, feeling that the time is right for them.

And the time has to be right for me, too.

In the here and now, I am about to set off on an adventure to the city with Hubby. The collection will have its time, just not now.

How can it be? I haven’t sent it out for months.

Time to get myself organised.

Time to pull up my socks.

Time to put on my big-boy pants.

Time to be brave.

Again.