To hell with waiting for the Muse -- Just send the money!

Publish or perish be damned. There are times I’d rather perish than wait, and wait and wait, only to be rejected at the end of the process.

I only mention this because yesterday, after much breast-beating, procrastination, being filled with a profound sense of unworthiness and all the other facets of writer angst, I finally finished a freelance travel article and sent it off to a newspaper that regularly prints – though sometimes rejects – my stuff. So now I’m waiting.

Writing is a loathsome business. Dorothy Parker once told a journalism class at some college or other that she detested writing. What she liked was “having written.” The process of putting thoughts into words is messy and dissatisfying. The thought exists clearly and profoundly, but then the words just don’t work. The best analogy I can make is to sexual performance anxiety. You are feeling “that way.” Scenarios play out in the head. Wonderful scenarios. The chance for an encounter presents itself and since there has been so much anticipation of what it will play out like – nothing works. Too much scene playing has led to a sterility of action. Too much conjecture about how a bit of writing will read means that the piece will never come together.

In that regard, writing to a newspaper’s deadline was better. You simply don’t have time to speculate. The old credo of “get the fucking thing down before deadline” means that you don’t think, you just write. And sometimes it actually comes out not looking bad. The flow is natural and the story is told and the phones don’t light up with the calls of irate readers, or story subjects threatening to sue.

So, as I said, right now I’m waiting. Waiting in this high-tech age is less onerous than it once was. There was a time when the article had to be bundled up in a brown manila envelope, replete with photos and cover letter, and then the package was mailed. The waiting game then was long and nasty. Only the naïve and inexperienced, by the way, ever included a SASE. To throw in that stamped and self-addressed envelope meant that the temptation was too great for the publisher or editor to immediately reject the copy and send it back. After I’d been in the game for a while I made sure that everything I sent was expendable.

Now it’s different, and sometimes more intimidating. You merely finish the piece to your liking. Hopefully somebody edits it – somebody relatively objective and knowledgeable (no writer should ever edit his or her own stuff) – and then you send it off, complete with digital photos. And that’s all there is to it. But, despite the process, the waiting time can still be lengthy.

What I try to do once I’ve hit the ‘send’ key is to then completely forget about it and go out for a coffee. I rarely succeed with the forgetting about it part.

Of course, then if the piece is rejected, the agony begins – the breast-beating, the self-flagellation. “I’m no good. Why in the hell did I ever choose this as a calling? What made me think I could write for a living? I think I’m a writer and then I look at the works of other people and I am so ashamed, etc. etc. etc.”

On the other hand, it might be accepted! Am I, the writer, then filled with jubilation? Not really. I’ll scrutinize closely the finished and printed piece and my phraseology will seem awkward and amateurish to me. I’ll find it embarrassing and maybe even feel like a fraud that was only dealing with a crappy editor who didn’t find all the dreadful flaws in my work.

On the other hand, I know payment will be forthcoming. And, as Dorothy Parker (again) said: “The tree sweetest words in the English language are: Check in mail.”