Beauty and good fortune

In which I reflect briefly on just being alive today -- and share an important update

My husband and I have been buying flowers to put in our fresh, new flower beds. And my husband has planted them. I look out our kitchen window several times a day now and feel kind of inexplicably happy when I see these plants blooming and stretching and thriving. They’re beautiful bundles of utterly contented and perfectly balanced life. When I gaze at them, I feel the way they look.

I cannot gaze at them enough.

I have mentioned in previous posts that I am writing a book about F*ckin’ People. Specifically, about assholes. Working title: Saving the World One <Bleep> at a Time. (<Bleep> because swear words like “asshole” are no longer welcome in book titles.) I have been thinking about and working on this book for years. And I basically gave up on it a couple years ago because I had no idea how to get the attention of an agent given the slews of manuscripts each one reads every day.

But now…

Thanks to a recommendation from my sister-in-law Carol, I connected with a collaborative writer who worked with me to write a successful book proposal. Not only did Sarah write with me and encourage me and represent Your Everyday Reader for me (because I’m so in my head that I don’t know anymore what normal people know and don’t know about relationships), but she also sent the book proposal around to agents she knew (or to agents people she knew knew).

And I got one. I got an agent.

And she is wonderful.

I am not one to share much about myself. It is difficult for me to believe anyone actually wants to know. But I thought my dear TTE readers might want to get this update. My book has made it through the proposal stage and the getting-an-agent stage. Now we’re heading into the hooking-a-publisher stage. And both Sarah and my agent are optimistic that we’re going to sell this baby.

We’ll see. But here’s the lesson I am actively learning (and it ain’t easy, given my particular psychic structure): My expectations of the world — that I won’t be seen or understood, that I’m always out of step — can change. Are changing. Persistence might just pay off this time. If it does, if my book sells, I will have a lot of internal work to do to adjust to this new data!

In the meantime, I am trying to ground myself by looking out my window and breathing gratitude for beauty and for my good, unbelievably good, fortune.

I’ll keep you posted.