 |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
||
 |
 |
|
||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
First StepsMarch 19, 2006 Magazines, catalogues, and envelopes were cascading off the flat surface assigned to them -- not for the first time, and not surprisingly either, since for about four weeks I've been dumping more and more onto the pile, barely managing to pull out the essentials, like bills to be paid and real letters -- so yesterday I did a very brave thing: I sorted through it. Which may not sound all that brave, until you consider that a by-product of the sorting was two piles, one of unopened bank statements, the other of 1099s and other stuff related to the filing of tax returns. Yep: cleaning up the mail table was step 1 toward the performance of that annual Rite of Spring, doing my taxes. First I get the forms together, then I reconcile my checking account, then I print out my incomes and outgos for 2005 -- after that, filling out Schedule C is, well, not exactly a snap, but at least it's thinkable. It doesn't hurt that this year for the first time in memory my quarterlies are paid up. I won't have to scrounge two or three thousand dollars before April 15! Makes a girl almost lighthearted, it does. Several other projects, mostly small to modest in size but all involving multiple steps, have been languishing around the apartment. And in the front yard: Uhura Mazda needs to get inspected by the end of this month, but I haven't made an appointment because I need to vacuum the cab first, which means excavating the mess that's accumulated behind the seats. No, she won't pass or fail based on the cleanliness of the interior or the exterior (which needs washing and maybe waxing), but at least this way I know I'll do a good cleaning job at least once a year. Then there are the airline reservations I haven't made for a science fiction convention I'm supposedly going to at the end of May. Excuse is that I can't make the airline reservations until I've ascertained the bus schedule from Woods Hole to Logan Airport. Weakness of excuse is obvious even to me -- c'mon, you're online several times a day and you can't manage to locate and download a stupid bus schedule? -- and suggests that the problem is not the bus schedule but my deep-down indecision about whether I want to make this particular trip. Once I have the bus schedule in hand, I really have to make up my mind. Easier to blame the whole thing on the lack of the damn bus schedule. Then there are the two Mud of the Place proposals that have been sitting next to the telephone, each lacking only a sample chapter and a cover letter, for long enough that I've almost forgotten why I wanted to query those particular publishers. Retracing my steps isn't terribly difficult -- I have the publishers' URLs, after all -- but it isn't the real problem either. The real problem is that the old "why bother" weed has taken root in my head again. You know: Why bother? U.S. publishing is irrational to the point of insanity, not to mention terminally lazy and infuriatingly smug, and who needs your damn novel anyway? Well, another project that was hanging fire was sending out a manuscript copy of the novel to a friend who volunteered to read it. A copy was recently returned by another reader, so I took it off the shelf, opened the box, and (pretending that I was just making sure that all the pages were there and in order) started reading the last chapter. I laughed, I cried, I remembered that the damn thing really is worth fighting for. It's now boxed up, addressed, and ready to go, and I'm ready to get back to those proposals. Amazing how it works. The outcome of a battle really does depend on a damn horseshoe nail. Someday I'll write a book on the uses and abuses of procrastination; I'm the daughter of a woman who successfully managed to avoid reaching the first step, so I take this stuff seriously. But not now: Rhodry wants out.
The other thing is that this technique has two edges, and one of them is downright handy. In the early throes of recovery from compulsive eating, I figured out that if there was no ice cream in the freezer or Pepperidge Farm cookies on the counter, then I couldn't eat them. My recovering alcoholic friends had the same idea: their sponsors told them, and later they told their sponsees, not to hang around with their old drinking buddies, and to stay out of bars. Recovery is hard work. It's OK, it's honorable, it's drop-dead smart to let the situation do some of the work -- to set yourself up for success, not failure. And that's the point: Success, whatever it is, tends to come down to your willingness to create the conditions that make the next step possible. When I say that my mother couldn't get to the first step, that's what I mean.
|
|
|||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
 |
|
|||
 |
|
|||
Home - Writing - Editing - About Susanna - Bloggery - Articles - Poems - Contact Copyright ©
Susanna J. Sturgis. All rights reserved. |
||||