So, I finally had the resolve to open up the synopsis response email and it wasn’t nearly as tragic as I feared (which is good since I was fearing a massacre of Jurrasic proportions). She told me that my premise was saleable – once again not the genre I specified though – and suggested some changes that I can easily fix.

So, why am I not over the moon then? Well, she also told me that it seems like I overwrite and she thinks there’s a good book in there but it took a scythe to get it. Now I did throw a few sentences in there that didn’t tell what was happening with the plot to try and convey a sense of my style and if synopsis is all about word conservation then i get that.

But what if that’s not just it? What if she’s telling me that I overwrite all the time, that my book is a great big mess of a jungle that no one is ever going to hike through because it’s just too much trouble? Now I understand that if I ever get this damn thing on a bookshelf it won’t be what it is now but i think I’d rather never get it there if it means going for word economy and cutting out everything that’s special about it. Maybe I just need to find the right agent, the right publisher to go take the chance but this doesn’t seem like the path of great risktakers if everyone is only worried in what will sell right now.

So the question is – am I delusional? Do I overwrite? I know that I think the beautiful nature of the words is the most important thing but I don’t think they’re purple, not just there to take up space and ramble and complicate things. If that’s how I want to evoke an image or a feeling, why can’t I?

Man, if this is how much stress and second guessing I have now, imagine if this actually ever happens. I will become the biggest basketcase that ever lived or learn the get over what other people think. There’s a lesson in there somewhere I think -it just might take a scythe to fine it.

— Post From My iPhone

I get it – I hear the words coming out of my mouth and I know they’re going to get me in trouble. I know they’re not right, that they’re not what anyone wants to hear. And yet, when it’s important, when it’s THIS important, how can I NOT say them?

I could have been more delicate. I could have been more calm and collected and poised. And I know that what I say isn’t going to make a lick of difference – that people are going to do what they’re going to do and they’re not going to listen to anything I have to say. And for someone whose goal in life is to make people stop and listen, that’s something it’s not easy for me to take but I do.

Maybe I’m a bitch, setting myself up to be the person who gets to say ‘I told you so’ down the line. Maybe I’ve just burnt a bridge and there’s nothing I can do to fix it, risked everything with one spark for a damn cigarette I didn’t really need. Maybe I’m just narcissistic and needy and need everything to be about me. Maybe I actually truly do care. None of these things matter, not my intentions or my goal or even the damn conversation. None of it.

But I’m not sorry for what I said – it was the truth. People always say the truth is good but only if you’re willing to hear it, sometimes not even if you’re ready to hear it. It was probably overkill, it was probably too much. I want to believe, I want to see it like she sees it, understand what she understands, but I don’t get to come in. I have to comment on the pretty drapes and the lovely tea cozies and just blow right over the point, tiptoeing around the elephant in the room that I’m dying to talk about. I’m not someone that easily avoids the point – I’m the one digging like crazy to get to it. I’m the person that comes up with funny names for the damn elephant.

Does she know that I want so badly to accept it and be done with it? Does she think I like being like this – always questioning, always worrying, always wondering? I want to be reassured – to ask all the questions and get all the answers and then believe that everything is going to be alright, even if it’s not, even if it’s never going to be. I wouldn’t even care if she lied and long as she doesn’t do it badly. Well that’s not true – and I guess that’s my problem. I want her to want to tell me. I want her to want to know what I think. I want her to want to include me in her life. I guess just like everything else, I want it so badly I just end up pushing it away. The time for wanting any of those things vanished with a slammed door.

Who cares if I happened to be right? Look at what the hell being right just cost me.